Salt Tolerance of Seedling and Adult Bread Wheat Plants Based on Ion Contents and Agronomic Traits

Abstract

Abstract A greenhouse experiment was conducted on two salt‐tolerant, two moderately tolerant, and two sensitive Iranian and exotic bread wheat cultivars and their F1 generations to investigate the effect of salt stress on ion contents of young leaves, biomass yield, and salt stress tolerance index. The materials were evaluated in gravel culture under high salinity (EC=22.5 dSm−1) and nonstress (EC=2.0 dSm−1) conditions. Results of stress intensity showed that K+/Na+ ratio, biomass yield, and Na+ concentration were most affected by salt stress. There was no genetic relationship between Mg2+ and Ca2+ contents with salt tolerance. However, strong relationships were observed among K+/Na+ ratio, biomass yield, and stress tolerance index. Factor analysis revealed four factors, which explained 99.79% of the total variation among characters. Three‐dimensional plots based on the first three factor scores confirmed that the most salt‐tolerant cultivar was Roshan (an old Iranian cultivar), and Roshan×Alvand and Kharchia×Roshan and their reciprocal crosses were the best salt‐tolerant crosses.