Assessing salt-stress tolerance in barley

Abstract

Identifying naturally existing abiotic-stress tolerant accessions in cereal crops is central to understanding plant responses toward sstress. Salinity is an abiotic stressor that limits crop yields. Salt stress triggers major physiological changes in plants, but individual plants may perform differently under salt stress. In the present study, 112 barley accessions were grown under controlled salt stress conditions (1 Sm-1 salinity) until harvest. The accessions were then analyzed for set of agronomic and physiological traits. Under salt stress, less than 5 % of the assessed accessions (CIHO6969, PI63926, PI295960, and PI531867) displayed early flowering. Only two (< 2 %) of the accessions (PI327671 and PI383011) attained higher fresh and dry weight, and a better yield under salt stress. Higher K+/Na+ ratios were maintained by four accessions PI531999, PI356780, PI452343, and PI532041. These top-performing accessions constitute naturally existing variants within barley’s gene pool that will be instrumental to deepen our understanding of abiotic-stress tolerance in crops.