Morphological and Molecular Characterization of Novel Salt-tolerant Rice Germplasms from the Philippines and Bangladesh

Abstract

To screen for new sources of salinity tolerance, 688 traditional rice varieties from the Philippines and Bangladesh were obtained, and their tolerance to hypersaline conditions at the seedling stage was examined. A total of 29 Philippine lines and 15 Bangladeshi lines were scored as salt-tolerant. Morphological assessment (plant height, biomass and Na-K ratio) revealed that among the 44 salt-tolerant accessions, Casibon, Kalagnon and Ikogan had significantly higher relative shoot length difference, relative shoot growth reduction and shoot Na-K ratio than the tolerant check FL478. Additionally, AC and Akundo exhibited significantly higher Na-K ratios than the other genotypes. The genetic diversity of the 44 genotypes was assessed using 34 simple sequence repeat markers. A total of 133 alleles were detected across all loci. Cluster analysis showed that AC, Akundo and Kuplod were clustered along with FL478, indicating a strong genetic relatedness between these genotypes. IR29 (susceptible check) was singly separated. The haplotype analysis revealed that none of the 44 genotypes had a similar allele combination as FL478. These accessions are of interest since each genotype might be different from the classical salinity-tolerant Pokkali.