article · Agronomy
Soil and irrigation salinity presents a major challenge for wheat production, particularly in arid regions facing climate pressures and population growth. Advanced wheat breeding lines from generations F6 to F8 underwent evaluation under real field salinity conditions using saline irrigation water. Through pedigree selection based on grain yield and related agronomic traits, ninety-four initial lines were narrowed down across consecutive growing seasons to thirty-four elite F8 lines. Significant genetic variation was observed across all measured traits, with heritability ranging from intermediate to high. Several elite F8 lines outperformed standard check cultivars under salinity stress. Hierarchical clustering categorised these lines into four groups, ranging from highly tolerant to slightly tolerant. These results show that the selected advanced lines can expand the narrow genetic pool for salt tolerance in wheat breeding programmes.
Salinity in soil and water reduces agricultural yields in arid environments, threatening food security as the climate changes. By identifying and selecting advanced wheat lines that survive and produce high grain yields under saline field conditions, crop breeders gain valuable genetic resources to develop resilient varieties capable of maintaining food production on salt-affected farmland.
The identified elite F8 wheat lines serve as promising breeding material for plant breeders and seed development organisations seeking to release salt-tolerant commercial crop varieties. Because these lines are at the advanced F8 generation and have been tested in real field conditions, they represent applied breeding stock that is close to pre-commercial variety registration and potential adoption by farmers in saline or arid areas.
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Salinity in soil or irrigation water requires developing genetically salt-tolerant genotypes, especially in arid regions. Developing salt-tolerant and high-yielding wheat genotypes has become more urgent in particular with continuing global population growth and abrupt climate changes. The current study aimed at investigating the genetic variability of new breeding lines in three advanced generations F6–F8 under salinity stress. The evaluated advanced lines were derived through accurate pedigree selection under actual saline field conditions (7.74 dS/m) and using saline water in irrigation (8.35 dS/m). Ninety-four F6 lines were evaluated in 2017–2018 and reduced by selection to thirty-seven F7 lines in 2018–2019 and afterward to thirty-four F8 lines in 2019–2020 based on grain yield and related traits compared with adopted check cultivars. Significant genetic variability was detected for all evaluated agronomic traits across generations in the salt-stressed field. The elite F8 breeding lines displayed higher performance than the adopted check cultivars. These lines were classified based on yield index into four groups using hierarchical clustering ranging from highly salt-tolerant to slightly salt-tolerant genotypes, which efficiently enhance the narrow genetic pool of salt-tolerance. The detected response to selection and high to intermediate broad-sense heritability for measured traits displayed their potentiality to be utilized through advanced generations under salinity stress for identifying salt-tolerant breeding lines.
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DOI: 10.3390/agronomy11020281
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