Bulgarian Journal of Agricultural Science, 14 (No 3) 2008, 313-320 Agricultural Academy THE IMPACTS ON SEEDLING ROOT GROWTH OF WATER AND SALINITY STRESS IN MAIZE (ZEA MAYS INDENTATA STURT.) O. BILGIN 1 , I. BASER 1 , K. Z. KORKUT 1 , A. BALKAN 1 and N. SAGLAM 1 1 Namik Kemal University, Agricultural Faculty, Department of Field Crops, 59030 Tekirdag, Turkey Abstract BILGIN, O., I. BASER, K. Z. KORKUT, A. BALKAN and N. SAGLAM, 2008. The impacts on seedling root growth of water and salinity stress in maize (Zea mays indentata Sturt.). Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., 14: 313-320 Effects of salinity and available water level at the seedling stage of dent corn variety were examined for some shoot and root characters. Two different salinity and four available soil water level had no effect on the emer- gence of corn. The highest values for root dry matter, leaf water loss, shoot fresh weight were obtained in 1.35 salinity water treatment. Generally, 2.7 salinity water treatment was decreased by all of the characters except for the number of leaves per plant and leaf fresh weight. 75% available water treatment caused in increasing the dry matter root and shoot, fresh weight for root and shoot, shoot and root length, number of leaves per plant and leaf fresh weight. The lowest values for all the characters were obtained by 25 % available water treatments. Key words: salinity, drought, leaf water loss, dry matter, shoot, root, corn E-mail: obilgin@nku.edu.tr Introduction Salinity and drought are the most serious prob- lems in arid and semi-arid areas which limit crop pro- duction (Maiti et al., 1994 and Khan et al., 2001). It is estimated that about 7 % of the land area and about 5% of agricultural land in the world has been exposed to salinity (Ghassemi et al., 1995; Flowers et al., 1997 and Munns et al., 2002), which was caused by inad- equate drainage, low quality irrigation water and land clearing. Besides, bringing into cultivation efforts of marginal lands with a high degree of natural salinity to produce more food for improving the population has increased the salinity problem (Flowers and Yeo, 1995). Over 50% of all irrigated lands are affected by salinization (El Swaify et al., 1983). Plant growth in saline soils is affected mainly by the reduced availability of water due to high osmotic pressure. The growth stage of the plants is very im- portant when considering salt tolerance. Plants are more sensitive to high salinity during germination and seedling stages, immediately after transplanting and when subject to other (e.g., disease, insect, nutrient) stresses (Saglam, 1993). Selection of crop cultivars resistant to field drought conditions is difficult to ob- tain due to the fluctuation of edaphoclimatic condi- tions. Water stress has been defined as the induction of turgor pressure below the maximum potential pres- sure (Osmond et al., 1987; Fitter and Hay, 1987). The magnitude of such stress is determined by extend and duration of the deprivation. Maize, one of the major cereal crops, is the most salt-sensitive of the cereals (Maas and Hoffman, 1977). Khan et al. (2003) stated that it contains huge 313