Evaluation of wheat (Triticum aestivumL.) salt stress tolerance using physiological parameters and retrotransposon-based markers

About 6% of the total land area in the world and 20% of the irrigated land is suffering from salt stress. Egypt is one of the countries that suffer from salt stress problems. The aim of this study was to determine salt stress tolerance of six wheat (Triticum aestivumL.) genotypes. These genotypes can be grown all over the world, found in gene banks and have pedigree. These genotypes were grown in pots under greenhouse conditions and subjected to two salt levels (tap water or control and 200 mM). Some morphological and physiological traits were determined. The results revealed that there were significant variations with all morphological and physiological traits as influenced by salt stress and genotypes. All studied morphological traits (shoot and root length and yield attributes) were decreased under salt stress conditions except Sids 13 and Sakha 94 genotypes which showed non-significant effect compared with unstressed plants. Total phenol, total flavonoid and antioxidant activity were significantly increased in shoots of all wheat genotypes under salt stress. Wheat genotypes responded differently to mineral contents under salt stress. The SDS-PAGE of seed proteins gave high level of genetic variability with polymorphism percentage of 65.38%. Furthermore, they revealed some important biochemical markers for salt stress tolerance. The six wheat genotypes were fingerprinted with eight primers using inter-primer binding sites and inter-retrotransposon amplified polymorphism techniques. In conclusion, the techniques marked each genotype successfully with different unique bands and detected molecular genetic markers correlated with salt tolerance in wheat crops.

Automated summary

The study showed that salt stress had significant impacts on the morphological and physiological traits of wheat, with certain genotypes exhibiting salt tolerance. Total phenol, total flavonoid, and antioxidant activity in wheat shoots significantly increased under salt stress, and seed protein SDS-PAGE revealed high genetic variability. Fingerprinting of the wheat genotypes using molecular markers correlated with salt tolerance was successful.