Abstract :
The effects of salitie irrigation water on growth, yield,
smut index and leaf CI content were investigated under
field conditions. The plants were grown in 1994 and 1995
and artificially infected with U. maydis- spore-suspension
at V^ and V,o leaf stages. The severity was rated on a 1-
9 scale, whenever the symptotns appeared. The results
showed that superior growth, greater yield performance,
associated with lower smut incidence and leaf Cl contents
were generally observed on Taba than its counterparts.
Increasing salinity exhibited significant increases in leaf
CI and induced marked inhibition on growth, yield and
SI data. The salt sensitivity of corn genotypes, as revealed
from the comparison of the slope of linear regression
equations, was related to 1.00: 1.19; 1.42 for cvs Taba,
310 and 320, respectively. The differential yield response
with respect to SI data proved that smut susceptibility
was inversely related to salt tolerance concept. The data
of Cl-disease interaction showed that smut reactions of
highly susceptible and resistant genotypes (cvs 320 and
Taba) were hardly monitored by plant Cl content, revealing
that disease resistance is genetically controlled. Conversely,
the progressive modifications of smut reaction,
accompanied by CI accumulation in the moderately susceptible
genotype 310 proved that disease resistance was
environmentally conditioned by salt stress.
