PLANT CELL BIOTECHNOLOGY AND MOLECULAR BIOLOGY

Nowadays, it has become very difficult to find suitable regions to be enable for the plants to achieve their optimum production potential. In Egypt, degraded soils reclamation is the main target for the agricultural policy to face the great gap between food production and consumption. So, a field trial was performed during two successive winter seasons of 2018 and 2019 aiming at evaluate the effect of gypsum soil addition as main plots [applied [100% of gypsum requirement (GR) or not] and foliar application of selenium (Se) at different rates (0.0, 2.5, 5.0 and 10 mg Se L^-1 as Na₂SO₃ ) as sub-plots on the performance of red cabbage plants grown  under sodicity condition. The findings showed that soil addition of gypsum to sodic soil before transplanting improved red cabbage performance. Selenium was beneficial at low concentration, but it has a toxic impact at high concentration, where the performance significantly increased with increasing Se rate from 0.0 mg L^-1 to 2.5 and 5.0 mg L^-1 and then significantly decreased at 10.0 mg L^-1. Generally, soil addition of gypsum and foliar spraying with Se at rate of 5.0 mg L^-1 was the superior treatment. Post-harvest soil analysis indicated that using gypsum positively affected soil properties e.g., exchangeable sodium percentage (ESP), exchangeable calcium percentage (ECaP) and total soil porosity percentage (TP).