Abstract

In context of climate-smart agriculture, soil chemical factors had been receiving much less attention in comparison to the soil physical and soil biological factors in crop husbandry. The objective of this study was to determine the growth responses of the drought-tolerant wild cucumber (Cucumis myriocarpus) leafy vegetable to chloride salinity. Uniform seedlings at five leaf-stage were each transplanted into 20 cm diameter plastic pots, containing 2 700 ml steam-pasturized river sand and Hygromix at 3: 1 (v/v) ratio. A geometric series of NaCl and CaCl2 at 3: 1 mM ratio induced chloride salinity. At 56 days after treatment, dry shoot mass, dry root mass, stem diameter, leaf number, vine length and chlorophyll content were significantly affected by salinity in both the experiments, with TTV of 73–93, 46–93, 59–77, 78–90, 77 and 80–82%, respectively. Dry shoot mass, dry root mass, stem diameter, leaf number, vine length and chlorophyll content versus salinity levels exhibited quadratic relations, with 93–98, 95–97, 91–98, 91–96, 84–95 and 90–100%, respectively, coefficients of determination. In Experiment 1, salinity had highly significant effects on soil pH and soil EC, contributing 73 and 77% in total treatment variation (TTV) of the respective variables, whereas in Experiment 2 the treatments contributed 64 and 98% in TTV of the respective variables. In conclusion, findings in the current study demonstrated that growth responses of C. myriocarpus to chloride salinity had density-dependent growth patterns.