Effects of vitamin pre-sowing treatment on sweet maize seedlings irrigated with saline water

Abstract

Salinity stress represents an obstacle for the production of plants of commercial interest, including sweet maize.  Among the techniques used to suppress the effects caused by excess salts in the soil is the exogenous application of vitamins.  Thus, the objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of the pre-sowing treatment of sweet maize seeds in solutions of thiamine, niacin and these two vitamins combined on the development of the plants irrigated with saline water.  The treatments were composed by the 24 h pre-sowing treatment with water, thiamine solution (thiamine 100 mg L-1), niacin solution (niacin 100 mg L-1) and a combined solution with these two vitamins (thiamine 50 mg L-1 + niacin 50 mg L-1) irrigated with saline water.  A control (pre-sowing treatment with water and irrigation with non-saline water) was also used.  It was observed that salinity stress affects the sweet maize initial development. Application of isolate thiamine or niacin and its combined application improves the relative contents of chlorophyll ‘a’ and total, height of shoot, leaf number, diameter of stem and shoot, root and total dry matter, reducing dry matter losses by 8.89%, 25.46% and 39.60%, respectively.  Soaking seeds for 24 h in thiamine and niacin solutions improve the initial growth of sweet maize plants under salt stress and a combined vitamin solution (thiamine 50 mg L-1 + niacin 50 mg L-1) effectively reduces the salt stress negative effect on the initial development of these plants.