Screening of Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) Genotypes for Salt Tolerance on the Basis of Physiochemical Characteristics and  Bio-Physiological Parameters and Indices

Kafeel Ahmed,Mohamed Soliman Elshikh,Tasneem Ahmad,Muhammad Yaseen Ashraf,Mona S Alwahibi,Zafar Iqbal Khan,Farzana Shaheen,Shahid Mehmood,Muhammad Umer Farooq Awan,muhammad Nadeem,Sonaina Nazar,mohamed Ragab Abdelgawwad

doi:10.37358/rc.21.3.8438

Abstract

Salt stress is a major threat for growth and development of wheat crop. Screening technique for salinity tolerance is an effective tool to identify tolerant cultivar and high yielding wheat genotypes. Present study was carried out to screen twenty wheat genotypes under laboratory terms utilizing various growth and physiological indices like plant fresh weight stress indices (PFSI), plant height stress tolerance index (PHSI), shoot length stress tolerance index (SLSI), germination stress tolerance index (GSI), plant dry weight stress indices (PDSI), root length stress tolerance index (RLSI), relative water content (RWC). Multivariate techniques like cluster analysis and correlation were used to analyze the variance between wheat genotypes. The correlations analysis indicated significant among different physiological indices like GSI, SLSI, RLSI, PFSI, PDSI and RWC. On the basis of cluster analysis 20 wheat genotypes were classified into three clusters: first cluster included (The genotype WL-711 was the premier scorer followed by Nifa Bathoor, ARRI-II and Millat-11) presents sufficient salt tolerating degree, on the other hand, cluster-2 is comprised of wheat genotypes (Inqilab-91, NIAB-09, Punjab-96, Sehar-2006, Tatara, AS-2002, SA-75, Lasani-09, FSD-08 and Galaxy-13) with medium level of salt tolerance and cluster-3 included genotypes (LU-26-S, Fakhar e Sarhad, Bakhtawar, Punjab-11, Barsat and Kohistan-97) did not perform upto the mark and have lower level of salt tolerance. Correlation analysis among different screening techniques indicated that physiological indices exhibited highly significant and positive correlations among GSI, PHSI, SLSI, PDSI, PFSI, and RWC while non-significant correlation existed among PDSI and RLSI. The correlation between PFSI and RWC was significant. Significant correlations between cluster analysis and different indices also proved that salt tolerant wheat genotypes screened.

Highlights

Salinity is one of the important environmental factors that cause soil degradation, limit distribution and productivity of major crops in many regions of the world [1-3]
Overall ranking for germination stress tolerance index (GSI) have shown that Kohistan-97 was at 20th position whereas WL-711 was at 1st, Barsat covers 2nd and NifaBathoor was found at 3rd position
Genotypic mean clearly indicated that WL-711 gained at first, NifaBathoor was found at second, Barsat was at third rank and Galaxy-13 is at 20th positions

Summary

Introduction

Salinity is one of the important environmental factors that cause soil degradation, limit distribution and productivity of major crops in many regions of the world [1-3]. About 6.3 million hectares out of the 80.0 million hectares or 197.0 million acres (total geographical area of Pakistan) is salt-affected. It includes 0.45 million hectares in Punjab, 0.94 million hectares in Sindh and 0.5 million hectares in NWFP [4]. Plant germination and early seedling growth is mostly limited due to salinity [5]. Accumulation of excess amount of salt in the root affects emergence which results in prohibition of growth and development of plants and wheat crop as well [6]. Out of world’s total cereal production Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) constitutes up to 29 -30% and is the third most grown staple food crop of the world population after maize and rice [7-9]

Methods

Results

Conclusion