Preliminary evaluation of salt tolerance of Axonopus compressus

A preliminary assessment of Axonopus compressus salt tolerance among one cultivar and 19 different geographical distributions of accessions utilized total stem length, total number of branches, root to shoot ratio, leaf brown percentage and turf quality. The results showed that there were significant or very significant differences among different accessions treated with 150 mmolL-1 of NaCl solution. The coefficients of variation of different indicators ranged from 9.1%-50.9%, of which the minimum of root to shoot ratio, and maximum of leaf brown percentage. There were significant correlations (maximal correlation coefficient of -0.927) among different indexes of A.compressus. Based on the five characteristics （total stem length, total number of branches, root to shoot ratio, leaf brown percentage and turf quality）, SPSS 16.0 was used to divide A.compressus accessions into three salt tolerance types:salt tolerance, intermediate and saltsensitive.