Evaluation of Selected Indian Bread Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) Genotypes for Morpho-physiological and Biochemical Characterization under Salt Stress Conditions

Wheat is the second most important crop after rice in India and occupies approximately 28.5 million hectare area. Salinity is one of the major factors reducing plant growth and productivity worldwide, and affects about 7% of world’s total land area. In India about 6.73 million hectare land area is salt affected. The aim of this study was to investigate the morpho-physiological and biochemical response of wheat to temporal salinity (ECiw = 10.0 dSm−1) exposures. Ten wheat genotypes were evaluated in two successive growing seasons (2012–2014), with complete randomized design with three replications under both salinity stress and non-stress conditions. The morpho-physiological and biochemical character measured in this investigation, inhibited under both salt stresses (S1 & S2) conditions but much more significantly inhibited under long-term salinity exposure (S2) than S1 because interrupting the metabolic process of plant, resulting in reduced growth and productivity. According to correlation result, selection of high yield genotypes can be done based on plant height (0.649*), tiller plant−1 (0.808**) and leaf area (0.687*). The multivariate morpho-physiological and biochemical parameters should be further used to develop salinity tolerance in wheat breeding improvement programmes.