The environmental stress such as salinity of soil or water is serious difficult for medical plants and field
crops in further areas of the world, especially arid and semiarid regions. In order to study salinity stress on
Hibiscus sabdariffa L. germination indices, an experiment as completely randomized design was conducted
under controlled conditions (germinator) with three replications in Birjand Branch of Islamic Azad University,
Birjand, Iran in 2011. To create salinity stress, sodium chloride (NaCl) at five levels of 0 (as control), 2, 4, 6 and
8 ds m-1 were used. Effect of salt levels on investigated traits was significant. Means comparison showed that
increasing of stress levels from 0 to 6 ds m-1 lead to reduction whole studied traits of Hibiscus sabdariffa.
Means comparison for these traits showed that the application of 8 ds m-1 salinity resulted in the loss of seedling
length, seedling weight, germination percentage, germination rate and seed viability index of Hibiscus
sabdariffa L. seeds by 16.2, 12.3, 18.7, 20.3 and 31.6% respectively, as compared to control treatment (0 ds m-1
salinity). In total, it can be concluded that salinity stress significantly decreased germination and growth
parameters of seedlings of Hibiscus sabdariffa L.
