Bread wheat responds salt stress better than einkorn wheat does during germination

Abstract

Salt stress during germination degenerates crop establishment and declines yield in wheat (Triticum subsp.). Against salt (NaCl) stress, we investigated 12 bread (Triticum aestivum L.) and 10 einkorn wheat (T. monococcum subsp. monococcum) entries for germination rate, germinating power, coleoptile length, shoot length, root length, shoot/root length ratio, root fresh weight, root dry weight, and root fresh/dry weigh ratio. An effective blocking in variance analysis improved statistical significance and differentiation between germination stages and wheat entries. Salt total and salt ranking tolerance indices grouped the wheat entries into tolerant (Bayraktar 2000, Gerek 79, İkizce 96, Gün 91, Demir 2000, and Momtchil) and susceptible ones (Population-4, Population-14, Population-15, Population-9, Population-11, and Population-10). The best coleoptile length and root fresh weight developments occurred between 0 and 0.15 M and root length between 0 and 0.10 M salt doses. Coleoptile length, root fresh weight, and root dry weight started decreasing at 0.20 M. Pearson linear correlation coefficients were significant at different levels for coleoptile length, root fresh weight, and root dry weight. Spearman correlation coefficients were not significant between the worst salt affected characters of coleoptile length, shoot length, root length, root fresh weight, and root dry weight characters under the control treatment but were significant under salt stress. A significant PC value of 0.356 was recorded for root dry weight, 0.335 for root length, 0.310 for shoot root length ratio, and 0.309 for root fresh weight in PC 1. The first three PCs accounted for 90.52% of total variation. The highest PC was PC1 (71.946%), followed by PC2 (11.098%), and PC3 (7.481%). The dendrogram of all wheat entries clearly differentiated bread and einkorn wheats as both salt indices did. Here, it seemed, then, that those bread wheat cultivars were more salt tolerant than einkorn populations, most likely because of their geographic origin differences.