Journal of Crop Production and Processing

The successive droughts and the degradation of water and soil resources quality (salinity and toxicity of nutrients like boron) are serious challenges for tropical fruit tree cultivation such as mango in Hormozgan province south of Iran. Using some nutrients like silicon is believed to be effective in order to mitigate the aforementioned problem. Hence, an experiment was carried out in which six boron levels (0, 5, 10, 20, 40 and 80 mg B/kg soil as H₃BO₃) and four levels of silicon (0, 70, 140 and 280 mg Si/kg soil as Na₂Si₃O₇) were applied on young mango seedlings. The results showed that the use of boron (80 mg B/kg soil) had a significant effect on measured mango vegetative traits; as the dry weights of leaf, stem and root were reduced by 66, 57.4 and 58.8 percent, respectively. Moreover, the chlorophyll index was decreased by boron application whereas using Silicon increased the chlorophyll index. Using silicon, in all boron levels increased proline and decreased reducing sugars concentrations in the mango plant.