Growth variation and proline accumulation of Echinacea purpurea cultivated to CaCl2 salinity
Abstract Purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea (L.) Moench) is classified as medicinal plant comes from North America and not much developed in Indonesia. E. purpurea can be developed by utilizing suboptimal land such as saline land. This study aims to determine the effect of CaCl2 concentration on growth and proline accumulation of three accessions E. purpurea. This study used a Completely Randomized Design (CRD) with 2 factors and five replications. The first factor is three accessions E. purpurea (accession 1; 2; and 3). The two factor is four concentrations CaCl2 (0; 2500; 5000; and 10000 ppm). The observations are plant height, number of leaves, number of branches and proline accumulation. Data were analyzed using SPSS to test difference. The results showed that highest concentration of CaCl2 can inhibit growth and increase proline accumulation. The highest proline accumulation in accession 2 was 22.8002 µmol g−1, accession 2 as an indicator of accession tolerant to salinity.