Synergistic effects of salt and drought stress in wheat responses studied by high throughput phenotyping
Year: 2017
Type: conference-abstract
Abstract: Screening of crops for tolerance can strengthen breeding programs by identifying genotypes with increased tolerance and yield potential. The main objective of the present study was to analyze salt tolerance of 14 wheat genotypes originating from different geographical locations (Austria, Azerbaijan and Serbia) under well-watered and water limited conditions by using high-throughput shoot and root phenotyping platforms. Comparative investigations of various morphological, physiological, biochemical and enzymatic responses concerned with salt and drought tolerance were performed at different developmental stages. Our results show that the adverse effects of salt stress are enhanced under water limitation. Water use efficiency remains unaffected by salt stress in well performing wheat lines, e.g. Capo, but drops significantly in salt sensitive lines, e.g. Azamatili 95. Analysis of gas exchange parameters during biomass accumulation and grain filling period show that biomass accumulation and grain production is roughly correlated with photosynthetic efficiency. Proline is an important osmoprotectant whose amount was significantly increased under salt plus drought stress, and also to a smaller extent under drought stress alone, while the applied salt stress alone had negligible effect on the proline content. It is concluded that the co-occurrence of saline and water limited conditions induce large extent of biomass and grain yield loss in wheat, which can be partly reversed by providing well-watered conditions if it is practically feasible. We could also identify wheat lines which show higher tolerance to combined effects of salt and drought, which demonstrates the potential of high throughput plant phenotyping in breeding for drought and salinity stress tolerance in crop plants.
Language: English
Subfield: Plant Science
Domain: Life Sciences
SDG: Zero hunger
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7127775675