Determination of Salinity Stress Tolerance in Diverse Rice Germplasm

Abstract

Abiotic stress poses a significant challenge to agricultural production, especially as the world's population continues to grow. Meeting the demand for food is particularly challenging given that a large portion of the global population relies on rice as a staple. The study examined the diversity of salinity-tolerant germplasm based on physiological and morphological parameters using a complete randomized design with three repeats. Different genotypes were grown in the experiment under varying salt stress as well as normal conditions. Salinity treatment was applied at the two-leaf stage, resulting in two treatments: control (non-stressed), and salinity stress. Analysis of variances (ANOVA) for attributes such as plant height, panicle length, yield per plant, and others revealed significant variations due to the diversity in germplasm. Correlation analysis showed significant associations among most studied traits, with panicle length exhibiting powerful associations. Further analysis, including RADAR analysis, identified several genotypes as being the most salt-tolerant, with G13, G34, G31, and G8 demonstrating superior performance across multiple traits under salt-stress conditions. On the other hand, because of their poor performance, G24 and G28 were identified as genotypes susceptible to salt. These results demonstrate how salt-tolerant genotypes can be used in rice breeding programs to create high-yielding cultivars resistant to salinity stress, which would support efforts toward sustainable food security.