Screening of wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) lines against salinity under field condition

Abstract

An experiment was undertaken in order to screening wheat genotypes against salinity under field condition with 14 wheat genotypes including 6 check varieties. The genotypes were tested in saline soil where the salinity of the experimental field ranges from 1.5 to 10.3 dS/m during the cropping period. Analysis of variance revealed significant variation among the genotypes for all characters. Phenotypic and Genotypic co-efficient of variation was low for almost all the characters. Phenotypic co-efficient of variation ranged from 8.42 to 23.45 for plant height and yield respectively, while the highest genotypic coefficient of variation (18.90) was observed in yield and lowest (6.83) was found in seed per spike. All of the trait exhibited moderate to high heritability in broad sense (h2b) coupled with a wide range of genetic advance and genetic advance in percentage of mean. Heritability ranged from 37.64`to 91.14 for seed per spike and thousand seed weight respectively. Yield had significant positive correlation with spike length, spikelet per spike, seed per spike, thousand seed weight. On the other hand, yield was found to show a positive relationship with tiller per plant. Tiller per Plant, spikelet per spike, 1000 seed weight were responsible for reduction of yield per plant indirectly. Yield ranged from 1.14 ton/ha to 2.1 ton/ha. The present research work clearly demonstrated that based on field performance considering yield, the genotypes BARI Gom 25 and BARI Gom 26 is best and other some genotypes BAW 1182, BAW 1177 respectively showed their most effective performance on saline soil.