Grouping of wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) varieties on the morpho-physiologic characteristics under salinity stress condition

Salinity is one of the most important environmental stresses that can affect crop production. The research aimed to study the genetic diversity of 20 wheat varieties at Islamic Azad university, Ahvaz branch in 2015 in factorial experiment in basis randomized completely blocks design with 3 replications of 20 varieties as the first factor and salinity stress with NaCl at 4 levels of zero (distilled water), 4, 8 and 12 ds/m as the second factor was implemented. The principal components analysis, 11 studied traits is divided into 2 components on the basis of 57% of the data changes can be justified. The first and second components respectively 39.7% and 16.9% of the total variation stated and respectively are tolerant and sensitive to salinity were named. Using cluster analysis of 20 varieties located in three clusters. Varieties of Arg, Listan, Bahar, Maron and Hirmand were in the second cluster and the percent of emergence, length of seedling, dry weight of seedling, seed vigor index, leaf relative water content, K concentration, K/Na ratio, STI based dry weight of seedling and length of seedling were higher than the overall mean and it is worth noting that these characteristics in high salinity conditions are favorable. As well as the ionic leakage and Na concentration less than the overall mean that it is desirable in terms of salinity tolerance. According to this study, the use of this varieties for future breeding programs are recommended for salinity tolerance.