Abstract: Growing salinity-tolerance plants is one of the effective measures for the rational use and exploitation of coastal land resources. With sand culture in greenhouse, this paper studied the effects of different concentration seawate r on the biomass, ion absorption and distribution, chlorophyll content, and phot osynthesis of chicory seedlings. Comparing with the control, treating with 10% s eawater had less effect on the biomass, chlorophyll content, and photosynthesis of chicory seedlings, suggesting that 10% seawater did not significantly restrai n the growth of chicory seedlings, while treating with 20%, 30%, and 40% seawate r decreased the biomass, chlorophyll content, photosynthesis, stomatal conductan ce, and transpiration rate significantly, indicating that higher concentration s eawater inhibited the growth of chicory seedlings and lowered their carbon assim ilation capacity. The Na+ and Cl- contents in seedlings shoot and root increa 〖JP2〗sed with increasing seawater concentration, while the K+ content was the highest under the stress of 20% seawater. Like Na+ and Cl-, the K+ accumulation in ro ot kept increasing with the increase of seawater concentration. All of the results su ggested that chicories seedlings had definite salinity-tolerance, and could be planted with the irrigation of low concentration seawater or saline water.

Key words: Cucurbita moschata, Root exudates, Allelopathy, Orthogonal design