Agro-morphological characterization of 31 barley accessions after NaCl treatment

Abstract

The current study reported the agro-morphological evaluation of 31 barley accessions for salt tolerance at the maturity stage. Plant dry weight, tiller number, tiller length, spike number, spike length, awns length, grain number per row, grain number per spike, grain number per plant, grain weight, and thousand-kernel weight were determined after long-term salt treatments (0, 100, and 200 mM NaCl). Accessions, having different responses to salinity, were assessed through eleven agro-morphological traits. Agglomerative hierarchical classification showed three clusters. Among the tolerant cluster, Kebilli 2 and Tozeur 2 appeared the most promising accessions, and they showed the highest dry weights under control and saline conditions. Equally, they showed the most productive accessions in terms of spike number per plant, grain number per plant, and total grains weight per plant under control and salt conditions. Principal component analysis revealed that for the promising accessions, Kebilli 2 and Tozeur 2, the first both factorials explaining more than 72% of variance were related to plant dry weight, total grain weight, and spike and awn lengths. Therefore, Kebilli 2 and Tozeur 2 are highly recommended for culture in saline soils and use in hybridization programs to develop salinity-tolerant varieties.