Screening for Salinity Tolerance in Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) Genotypes in Seedling Stage

Chickpea is known as a plant with high nutritional and economic value; however, it is sensitive to salinity stress. Nowadays, a lot of research has been done to identify cultivars tolerant to salinity stress in chickpeas to increase their yield in saline soils. In general, due to the economic value of chickpeas, including chickpea as an important and useful food for humans, the need to grow chickpeas in areas that are less stable and obtained for resources, soil and cultivars of salt-resistant chickpeas selection of salt-resistant cultivars is needed. Results In the present study, 72 cable-type chickpea genotypes were selected and studied in terms of tolerance to salinity stress.

In this study, seeds of 72 chickpea genotypes were prepared from the seed bank of the Plant Science Research Institute of Ferdowsi University of Mashhad and cultivated in a greenhouse under hydroponic conditions. The study was conducted in a completely randomized design with three replications at salinity stress of 12dSm-1sodium chloride (NaCl) one week after grow. Four weeks after stress, different characteristics were examined.

The results showed that 53 genotypes (equivalent to 74%) were in the range of survival of more than 76% and most of them had 100% survival. Also, none of the genotypes survived less than 25%. Most genotypes were in the vegetative stage at harvest time and only MCC1299, MCC1254, MCC1134, MCC1058 and MCC1037 genotypes were in the flowering stage and had a survival range of more than 75%. As the survival percentage increased, the number of lateral branches increased. Leaf survival percentage in the survival range of 75-51% showed the highest value of this index (76.78%). The highest amount of sodium (11.09 mg. g-1. DW-1) was observed in the survival range of 75-51%. But the amount of potassium showed an insignificant decrease with increasing survival percentage. With an increasing survival percentage, the amount of dry weight increased significantly and increased from 50-26 to 75-51 and 100-76% by 1.6 and 1.8 times, respectively. The results of cluster analysis showed the relative superiority of the forth group genotypes including MCC1058, MCC1291 and MCC1296 in most of the studied traits.

In general, the results indicate that the genotypes belonging to the fourth group are more suitable to use their superior traits in tolerance to salinity stress.