4.2. Plant Growth, Salt Treatments and Plant Sampling

Salt treatments were started four weeks after sowing. Plants were watered twice a week with solutions of 0 (control), 200, 400, 600 or 800 mM NaCl in deionised water. Each treatment included five individual plants of each species as biological replicas. Plant material (the root and the aerial part of each plant) was harvested after four weeks, and several growth parameters were determined: root length (RL), stem length (SL), and fresh weight of roots (RFW) and leaves (LFW). Part of the fresh root and leaf material was weighed (FW), dried in an oven at 65 °C for ca. 72 h (until constant weight), and weighed again (dry weight, DW) to calculate the water content percentage of roots and leaves, as WC% = [(FW−DW) / FW] × 100.