Evaluation of the morpho-physiological traits and the genetic diversity of some Egyptian bread wheat cultivars under salt stress conditions

Salinity is the main impedance to world food security; it is considered one of the most serious environmental stresses that prohibit agricultural production in many countries. The development of salt-tolerant crop cultivars is indispensable. Eleven traits related to productivity and salinity tolerance were evaluated in the present study under different concentrations of salt stress. The data displayed that, Misr1, Misr2 and Shandaweel1 have maintained higher growth rates compared with the other cultivars under high salt concentrations. The results revealed a reduction in morphological and physiological parameters with the increase in saline conditions. Correlation coefficients among vegetative growth, physiological and biochemical traits show that the total number of leaves per plant was significantly positively correlated to all studied traits at (p < 0.05) except for both Na+ ppm and phenols content values which observed negative relationships. The genetic difference among the ten wheat cultivars used was resolved by simple sequence repeat (SSR), Sequence-related amplified polymorphism (SRAP), and Start codon targeted (SCoT) polymorphism. The results of the comparison between the different molecular markers showed that the most effective marker that showed the genetic diversity between wheat cultivars was the SSR with 63.8% polymorphism. Allelic frequency of the different SSR, SRAP and SCoT markers tested has differed among the ten wheat cultivars. These findings could be a good indicator of the salt tolerance mechanism present in the studied wheat cultivars. Therefore, these markers are of considerable value and can be utilized to screen large wheat populations for salt tolerance.