ABSTRACT
Salt stress is one of the most critical abiotic stresses having significant contribution in global agriculture production. Chickpea is sensitive to salt stress at various growth stages and a better knowledge of salt tolerance in chickpea would enable breeding of salt tolerant varieties. During present investigation, in vitro screening of desi chickpea by continuous exposure of seeds to NaCl-containing medium was performed. NaCl was applied in the MS medium at the rate of 6.25, 12.50, 25, 50, 75, 100, and 125 mM. Different germination indices and growth indices of roots and shoots were recorded. Mean germination (%) of roots and shoots ranged from 52.08 to 100%, and 41.67-100%, respectively. The mean germination time (MGT) of roots and shoots ranged from 2.40 to 4.78 d and 3.23-7.05 d. The coefficient of variation of the germination time (CVt) was recorded as 20.91-53.43% for roots, and 14.53-44.17% for shoots. The mean germination rate (MR) of roots was better than shoots. The uncertainty (U) values were tabulated as 0.43-1.59 (roots) and 0.92-2.33 (shoots). The synchronization index (Z) reflected the negative impact of elevated salinity levels on both root and shoot emergence. Application of NaCl exerted a negative impact on all growth indices compared to control and decreased gradually with elevated NaCl concentration. Results on salt tolerance index (STI) also revealed the reduced STI with elevated NaCl concentration and STI of roots was less than shoot. Elemental analysis revealed more Na and Cl accumulation with respective elevated NaCl concentrations. The In vitro growth parameters and STI values validated and predicted by multilayer perceptron (MLP) model revealed the relatively high R 2 values of all growth indices and STI. Findings of this study will be helpful to broaden the understanding about the salinity tolerance level of desi chickpea seeds under in vitro conditions using various germination indices and seedling growth indices. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12298-023-01282-z.
ABSTRACT
The control of surface water quality plays an important role in the management of water resources. In this context, the estimation and assessment of sodium adsorption ratio (SAR) are required which is one of the significant water quality parameters in the agricultural production sector. Chemical analysis might not, however, be feasible for a longer period of time in all the country-scale rivers. Therefore in this study, a support vector regression (SVR) model with different kernel functions; K nearest neighbour algorithm; and four decision-tree models, namely, Hoeffding tree, random forest, random tree, and REPTree, were used to estimate the SAR value with minimal parameters in the Aladag River in Turkey. In alternative scenarios, a correlation matrix and sensitivity analysis were used to ascertain the model inputs from among the 15 distinct parameters. All 15 parameters were utilized as model inputs in the first scenario, and only the sodium (Na) parameter was utilized as the model input in the final scenario. The accuracy of the aforesaid models was then assessed making use of correlation coefficient, Nash-Sutcliffe model efficiency coefficient, root mean square error, mean absolute error, and Willmott index of agreement. The results indicate that the SVR model with the poly kernel function provides the best estimates of SAR among the considered models. According to the findings, there is no considerable difference between the results acquired in the first and last scenarios, and one can determine the SAR value while making use of machine learning approaches taking into account only Na parameter.