Evaluation of Wheat Varieties/Lines for Salt Tolerance at Different Growth Stages

Abstract

Plant scientist, to overcome soil salinity have adopted various strategies, one of the important strategy is to exploit genetic variability of the available germplasm to identify a tolerant genotype that may sustain a reasonable yield on salt affected soils. In this experiment, forty six wheat varieties were screened for salt tolerance on germination, seedling and production stage at laboratory, lath house and field growth stages at different salt levels, respectively. Treatments included at laboratory were control and sodium chloride (NaCl) at various EC levels (10, 20 and 30 ds/m) and at lath house the treatments were control, 10 and 20 dS/m salt concentrations prepared from NaCl. Results indicate that the wheat varieties, Botitho #29, Tay # 14, Shorima # 14, Meda-wolabu # 35, K 6290 (bulk), ETBW–5879, Hidassie and ETBW - 6095 were relatively tolerant at germination and seedling stage in most of the growth parameters studied. Generally when the level of salt increase, most of wheat growth and yield parameters were decreased. In further screening under saline soil plant height, spike length, seed number/spike, root length and grain yield were showed significant difference among tested wheat varieties. ETBW-7879 and HIDASIE were the varieties that gave highest grain yield, while K-6290 and MEDE-WELABU varieties were appeared inferior other than tested wheat varieties grain yield. Keywords: Salt tolerance; wheat growth stage; germination; saline soil; grain yield; salt stress