Studies on Genetic Diversity and Stress Indices for Salinity Tolerance in Triticum dicoccum

Abstract

Salinity stands out as a crucial abiotic stress factor that significantly impacts both crop yield and quality. Wheat, considered a moderately salt-tolerant crop, offers a wealth of variability and diversity within its species, presenting an accessible avenue for enhancing wheat's salt tolerance. Consequently, this study investigated the extent of genetic diversity for salt tolerance among sixty Triticum dicoccum germplasm accessions. In both saline and control condition, the genotypes were divided into three and nine separate clusters respectively, showing that there was a significant level of genetic variability among the genotypes by multivariate analysis. It was observed that biomass was the largest contributor (85.19 %) to the divergence in the saline situation. Among the yield parameters under saline condition, tillers per meter followed by thousand-grain weight and spike length were observed to be important. Thirteen genotypes were salt-tolerant, according to the Stress susceptibility index (SSI). The stress tolerance index (STI) was defined as a useful tool for determining the high yield and potential stress tolerance of genotypes. Based on the stress tolerance index, only eight genotypes were said to be tolerant.