Repercussion of artificial polyploidy on salt stress tolerance if Trigonella foenum-graecum L in Tunisia

Salinity is a global problem that limits crop production, especially on irrigated area in the world The artificially induced polyploidy could make Trigonella foenum-graecum more tolerant to the salinity increase provoked by irrigation The objective of this study was to compare salt stress tolerance of the induced autotetraploids, the diploids resulting from treated plants and the control diploids of Trigonella foenum-graecum Morphological descriptors of these cytotypes, irrigated with water of 25, 50 and 100 mM of NaCl concentrations, was evaluated The three cytotypes manifested a decrease of morphological characters measured values with the increase of NaCl concentration in irrigation water Autotetraploid cytotype presented significant increases of these values compared to parent cytotype for the majority of studied characters It seems more tolerant to NaCl salinity than its diploid parent