Redox halopriming: A Promising Strategy for Inducing Salt Tolerance in Bread Wheat

New strategies to enhance growth and productivity of food crops in saline soils represent important research priorities. This study has investigated the role of certain priming techniques to induce salt tolerance of bread wheat. Wheat grains were soaked in 0.2 mM sodium nitroprusside as nitric oxide donor (redox priming), diluted sea water (halopriming) and the combination of both (redox halopriming). Grains were also soaked in distilled water (hydropriming); in addition, untreated grains were taken as control. Our results indicated that priming treatments significantly improved all growth traits and increased leaf pigments concentration as compared to the control. Priming treatments markedly enhanced membrane stability index, proline, total soluble sugars and K+ concentration with simultaneous decrease in the concentration of Na+ and malondialdehyde (MDA). Furthermore, yield and yield-related traits such as plant height, spike length, total number of tillers, 1000- grain weight, straw and grain yield considerably affected by priming treatments. Moreover, the grain yield of both genotypes was positively affected by redox halopriming treatment. However, the extent of enhancement was more prominent in Gemmiza-9 (salt sensitive) than that in Sakha-93 (salt-tolerant). Overall, this study clearly indicated that redox halopriming treatment is a promising and handy technique to induce salinity tolerance of wheat genotypes.