SOME BIOCHEMICAL CHANGES IN TWO EGYPTIAN BREAD WHEAT CULTIVARS IN RESPONSE TO GAMMA IRRADIATION AND SALT STRESS

Wheat plays an important role in every day's life of the world's population. The present study discusses the morphological traits and some biochemical changes of two Egyptian bread wheat cultivars irradiated at 0.0, 100, 200 and 300 Gy dose levels and cultivated in presence of different sodium chloride concentrations (0.0, 60 and 120 mM). The data indicated that all treatments increased the morphological traits except the No. of spikes/plant. The treatment 100 Gy combined with the lower concentration of NaCl (60 mM) caused enhancement in photosynthetic pigment contents. Also, with increasing irradiation dose level and sodium chloride concentration, proline content was increased and the highest content was observed in 300 Gy dose combined with 120 mM NaCl concentration as compared to control plants in both cultivars Sids-1 and Sakha-93 (0.530 and 0.451 mg/g FW, respectively). Percentage of nitrogen content was found to be decreased by salt stress in all concentration but when salt stress combined with gamma irradiation, all dose levels increased the percentage of nitrogen content and reached to the maximum increase (2.61 and 2.48) in the treatment (100 Gy combined with 60 mM NaCl) in Sids-1 and Sakha-93 respectively. Salinity increased the Na+ content and decreased K+ and Ca+2 contents in two cultivars grains. Gamma irradiation could be used successfully to develop mutants in wheat and abiotic stress tolerant.