Journal of Rangeland

Drought is one of the most important factors limiting the production of plant species in south Iran. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of drought stress and seed hydro-priming on some morphological and physiological traits of Cymbopogon olivieri. A completely randomized design was used with four levels of drought stresses (25, 50, 75 and 100 percentage of filed capacity) and hydro-priming (0 or control, 24, 48 and 72 hours) in four replications and 50 seeds per replication. Seeds were cultivated in plastic pots in greenhouse condition. All pots were irrigated with distilled water. Some morphological and physiological traits of the species were measured after a period of 40 days. Analysis of variance and mean comparison tests were used to evaluate the differences between the treatments. According to the results, increasing the drought stress caused a significant decrease in the measured morphological and physiological traits of C. olivieri. The highest morphological and physiological traits of the species including photosynthesis attributes, transpiration, leaves water contents, chlorophyll a and ab were identified in the seeds treated by hydro-priming for 48 and 72 hours under moderate drought conditions (25 and 50 percentage of filed capacity).