Evaluation of genetic diversity for bread wheat cultivars and landraces in terms of germination ‎under salinity stress

Given the importance of salinity at the germination stage, this study was carried out with the aim of ‎investigating the diversity of germination traits in bread wheat 91 cultivars and 204 landraces along with ‎three control varieties (Sistan, Narin, and Arg) under salinity (60 and 120 mM NaCl) as a factorial ‎experiment in a completely randomized design with two replicates in petri dishes. There was a high ‎diversity between wheat genotypes in terms of shoot and root length of seeding, shoot-to-root length ‎ratio, germination index, and seed vigor under both sat stress conditions; while germination energy and ‎germination percentage had low variation. There was a positive significant correlation between all the ‎traits (except the root length of seeding and the shoot-to-root length ratio) under all three conditions ‎‎(control, 60 and 120 mM NaCl). From the factor analysis, the PC1 and PC2 under 60 mM NaCl ‎treatment were named as seedling weight and germination percentage, respectively. Under 120 mM ‎NaCl treatment, PC1 and PC2 were named as germination percentage and seedling weight, respectively. ‎Based on the biplot, IP624925, IP628189, and IP624838 landraces and ADL, AFLAK, KHAZAR1, and ‎RIJAW cultivars were identified as superior genotypes under 60 mM NaCl treatment. Moreover, ‎IP627103, IP624596, IP626566, IP625433, and IP628189 landraces and Shiroodi and Dastjerdi ‎cultivars were selected as superior genotypes under 120 mM NaCl treatment. Overall, the selected ‎genotypes were identified as genetic material with the potential of salinity tolerance based on ‎multivariate statistical analysis. ‎