Evaluation of Eight Bread Wheat Cultivars for Soil Salinity Tolerance

SOIL salinity is the major global limitation to wheat production. Thus, eight Egyptian bread wheat cultivars were evaluated under normal and saline soil conditions during two consecutive seasons 2020/2021 and 2021/2022 at the experimental farm of Sakha Agricultural Research Station, Kafr Elsheikh, Egypt, eight wheat cultivars were arranged at Latin square design. The objective was to evaluate eight Egyptian wheat cultivars under the effects of salinity stress on yield and its components characteristics. The studied traits were days to heading, days to maturity, grain filling period, grain filling rate, plant height, biological yield, harvest index and grain yield and its components. The behavior of tested wheat cultivars were different under normal and saline condition due to the effect of soil salinity and the tolerance of the tested wheat cultivars. The studied traits were varied significantly in their values for most traits in the two seasons. All mean values of the studied traits decreased under the saline conditions. Generally, at normal soil the genotypic main effect plus genotype by traits analysis revealed that the best genotypes in studied traits was Giza 171 followed by Sids 14 and Shandweel 1, and the lowest genotypes for all studied traits was Sids 12 under saline soil conditions, the best genotypes in most traits were Giza 171, Sids 14, Gemmieza 12 then Misr 1 and Sids 12 was the lowest genotypes for all studied traits. The current investigation revealed that the bread wheat cultivars Giza171 was the best tested cultivar for all traits under normal soil and soil salinity condition. The wheat cultivar Giza 171 can be recommended to be cultivated in salinity effected soil and north delta.