Introducing Tolerant Pistachio Female and Male Genotypes to Salinity Stress

Pistachio is one of the most important and strategic crops in Iran which is typically cultivated under relatively saline soils and hot weather conditions. The present paper represents the results of an experiment which mainly focused on evaluating the tolerance of pistachio female and male genotypes to salinity stress. This experiment was carried out at the greenhouse of the Pistachio Research Center at Kerman, Iran, during 2016. The hybrids obtained from crosses between 17 male genotypes with a female genotype “Fandoghi” and also the combinations of 19 female genotypes after crossing with a male genotype “M15” were cultured in a completely randomized design with three replications under salt stress (4.2 dS m-1) without drainage in the greenhouse condition for a period of four months. The results show an increasing of the average soil salinity in pots to 32 dS m-1.The results also indicate that salinity might negatively affect growth parameters of pistachio. Therefore, selecting genotypes in this condition might lead to release tolerant genotypes. During the research, some yielded hybrids indicated the higher values for morphological parameters, the lower and higher concentration of Na+ and K+ under salinity stress, respectively. Meanwhile, it was found that, ‘Khanjari Damghan’ and ‘Mohseni’ among female parents, and M10, M15, and M25 among male parents are possible tolerant genotypes for further assessment in the area and also for releasing new rootstocks. The analysis of two clusters, i.e., cluster 1 (‘Khanjari Damghan’, ‘Mohseni’, ‘Lak Sirizi’, ‘Ebrahimi’, ‘Sifadini’, ‘Badami Zarand’, ‘Sephid Peste Nogh’, and ‘Post Kaghazi’) and cluster 2 (M10, M15, M24, M25, and M26) for female and male genotypes, respectively, exhibits that higher morphological parameters and also higher tolerance to salinity. More importantly, the analysis showed that these two categorized sets of genotypes can be proper choices for future breeding programs or to use directly in salinity conditions.