Screening and Assessment of Triticum aestivum Germplasm for Salt Tolerance in Naturally affected Conditions

Salt stress is one of the significant abiotic constraints for wheat production globally. Crop improvement by exploiting wheat germplasm resources for salt tolerance is a very crucial mitigation strategy. In this study, pre-breeding resources of 284 wheat lines were screened for salt tolerance based on multivariate analysis. It was conducted in the control and naturally salt-affected conditions for 2 successive years (2018-2019 and 2019-2020). The selected evaluated traits were germination percentage (GP), tiller number (TN), days to flowering (DTF), days to maturity (DTM), grain filling duration (GFD), plant height (PH), spike length (SL), spikelet per spike (SPS), spike weight (SW) and grain yield (GY). The screening was based on the salt tolerance index (STI), salt susceptibility index (SSI), hierarchical cluster analysis, principal component analysis (PCA), and PCA-based ranking of the salt-tolerant cluster.These wheat lines were categorized into four categories; salt-tolerant (46 lines), moderately salt-tolerant (99), moderately salt-sensitive (100), and salt-sensitive (39). Wheat lines with high yield performance along with other important traits under optimum and stressed conditions maintained high values of each attribute. SW, SL, TN, PH, and GP have a high impact on GY based on the PCA results. The specific ranking of the salt-tolerant cluster lines signifies the potential of a single tolerant line has been established. LTP lines 187, 211, 161, 220, 211, 210, and 73 identified tolerant wheat lines are recommended for wheat improvement. The favorable adaptive traits will be instrumental in the wheat breeding program for salinity tolerance.