Maize (Zea mays L.) occupies one of the important cereal crops all over the world. It serves as food and oil for human, feed for livestock and as raw material for industry [1], [2]. It is widely grown in various soil and climatic conditions due to its contribution among cereals in the world. It can play a glorious role in economy of the country by feeding malnourished people as well as solving food problems. Therefore, maize should get priority considering the protein malnourishment of the people, because it encompasses more digestible protein than the other cereals [3]. Furthermore, due to the rising poultry industry in Bangladesh, the need for maize is increasing very sharply as maize is an important component of poultry feed. In Bangladesh, total land area and production of maize are 395500 ha and 279500 m tons respectively [4]. The world agriculture faced lots of problems due to soil salinity as its damage the various cellular function of plant. The land is becoming non-productive due to accumulation of salt in fresh soil through tidal flow close proximity to sea level in each year. About 300 million ha of irrigated farmland is estimated to be affected by salinity. Four countries viz. China, India, Pakistan and United States provided more than half of all salt-affected irrigated farmlands in the world [5]. The most severe difficulties for crop production in the dry regions are high concentration of toxic ions especially NaCl either in soil or in irrigation water [6]. Plant growth and productivity drastically restricted by salinity that is of the major environmental factors [7]. The salt stress could be lead to a decrease in the growth and productivity of various crops in the world [8-16]. The disruption of intracellular ionic concentration and osmotic gradients inhibiting a number of vital physiological functions reduced by salinity resulting malfunctioning of plant morpho-physiological characters i.e photosynthesis [17], reduction of protein synthesis and activities of enzyme [18], poor nutritional balance (lowering N, P, K⁺, Ca²⁺ unbalanced carbon metabolism) [19], and stunted stem length, stem width, stempith diameter, leaf blade thickness, leaf vascular bundle length and leaf xylem vessels [20], [21]. Reduction of nutrient uptake capacity often accompanied by mineral toxicity leading to nutritional imbalance [22]. Soil reclamation and/or improved irrigation techniques (generally expensive) could be a systematic tactics for the management of problematic soils/salt affected soil in the arid and semi-arid tropics of this universe. The most inexpensive and more sustainable solution for using these problematic soils is the crop improvement through genetically or agronomical management. So, improvement of new methods to introduce salt stress resistance and tolerance varieties is so important. By cultivating the tolerant genotype that may sustain a reasonable yield on salt affected soil [23]. The germination and tolerance mechanism greatly varied in crop to crop at growth and seedling stage [24]. The selection criterion for screening salt tolerant individual and increasing salt tolerance in many species is the vigorous growth at the seedling stage [25]. Among all of the life cycle of plant, the germination and seedling stage is the sensitive to salinity than the adult stage [26]. The greater reduction of early seedling and growth stage was observed in wheat and sorghum with increasing salinity [27]. Therefore, the present experiment was carried to evaluate salt tolerance of four maize varieties at germination and seedling growth under saline stress environment.
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