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SODIUM CHLORIDE
TOLERANCE IN RICE (ORYZA SATIVA L.) AT EARLY SEEDLING GROWTH:
GENOTYPIC VARIABILITY, IDENTIFICATION AND SELECTION
ABDUS
SALAM, ZULFIQAR ALI* AND MUHAMMAD ASLAM
Abstract:
Plant growth
response of four week old seedlings of 48 rice lines/cultivars to four
NaCl levels (0, 10, 15 and 20 dS/m) was assessed in solution culture.
Genotypic responses were compared from measures of absolute and relative
salt tolerances. Increasing salinity levels in the growing medium
differentially reduced fresh shoot weight, seedling fresh weight and
specific shoot length. Shoot length, root length, seedling length, fresh
root weight, specific root length, dry shoot weight, dry root weight and
seedling dry weight were less affected differentially. The rice
genotypes originating from Pindi Bhatian exhibited significantly greater
salinity tolerances overall than those originating from Faisalabad, Kala
Shah Kaku and IRRI.
Estimated broad sense heritabilities indicated that phenotypic variance
exceeded that of genotypic by nearly two orders of magnitude.
These findings
indicate that the genetic improvement of salt
tolerance in rice through selection will be problematic due
to masking effects of the environment, and imply rigorous and careful
selection of salt tolerant genotypes.
Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, University of Agriculture,
Faisalabad-38040, Pakistan
*
Corresponding author:
zulfiqarpbg@hotmail.com;
Zulfiqar_ali@uaf.edu.pk
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