Assessment of Plant Adaptation Strategies to Salt Stress in Arid and Semi-Arid Environments

This study was carried out at the winter period 2023-2024 in one farm at the northern part of Babylon Governorate. It sought to assess the physiological effect of spraying of foliar micronutrients on growth and productivity of two cultivars of barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) in saline soils under semi-arid environmental conditions. It was planned to be a factorial experiment with a randomized complete block design (RCBD) that would involve two factors parents and research and three levels of foliar nutrient solution (0, 1, 2 ml L -). This experiment would have three replicas. The findings revealed that foliar nutrient spraying had a large impact on the vegetative growth and the productivity characteristics. There was increased number of branches, height of the plants, area of the flag leaves and chlorophyll index as compared to the control treatment. Most of the studied traits were maximally efficient with the highest level of spray (2 ml L -1). The physiological enhancement was manifested on the rise of grain yield and biological yield which point to the action of micronutrients in promoting photosynthetic activity and dry matter gain amid osmotic impact of salts. It was also found that there are traits that differ according to the two varieties and there is a significant interaction effect between variety and the level of the spray which testifies to the diversity in genetic response to foliar feeding. As revealed in the findings, foliar management of micronutrients can serve as an effective technique to improve the performance of barley crop in semi-arid environments, and based on these findings the importance of using the right variety is needed to obtain the highest productivity.