RESEARCH ON THE BEHAVIOR OF ORNAMENTAL SPECIES IN SALINE SOILS CONDITIONS.

Although over the years, the cut flower industry has faced various challenges, it still remains an important sector of agriculture. Globally, in recent years, the production of cut flowers has increased. This can be associated on the one hand with the low impact on the environment, but also with their ecological effect. Apart from the traditional cut flowers that require large inputs of energy, there can be other ornamental species that can successfully fulfil multiple roles: improving ecosystem services as well-being through colour and attracting insects, economically easy to maintain and last but not least, bioremediation and implicitly, the valorisation of degraded land by natural or anthropogenic factors. Thus, the paper aims to present the behaviour of some ornamental species cultivated in different concentrations of salinity, as follows: S1 - 4,310, S2 - 12,330, S3 - 8,050, S4 - 5,760, S5 -18,630, S6 -24,600 mS/cm. As ornamental plant species were used Limonium sp., Celosia sp., Gypsophila sp., Amaranthus sp. During the experiment, seed germination and biometric measurements as plant height and number of leaves of the plant species were monitored. Also, before and after the experiment, for each variant of cultivation substrates, pH and electrical conductivity (EC) were registered. According to the obtained results, it was demonstrated that halophytic ornamental plants like Limonium sp. can adapt to soils with extreme salinity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]