Screening of soybean cfltivars for salinity tolerance FNDER hydroponic conditions

Salinity stress effect crops in various ways, leading from abnormalities in gene expression via changes at the cellular level to alterations in growth and development of the crop. Salinity greatly affects the crop productivity by inducing various complications in plants. In the current study, we have screened 69 soybean cultivars on the basis of their salinity resistance by devising an easy, rapid, reliable, and inexpensive screening technique. The growth, biomass and physiological parameters of the selected cultivars were measured after growing them for 42 days in hydroponic solution. The variations among the cultivars through selected parameters of the control and stressed plants were assessed to group the cultivars in three groups, i.e. highly susceptible (HS), susceptible (S), and tolerant (T). Certainly, the application of NaCl as a salt stress has significantly affected the root and shoot length, transpiration rate (TR), photosynthesis, chlorophyll contents, root and shoot weight, nodule weight in most of the soybean cultivars. Besides, few cultivars have retained the above mentioned growth parameters under the salinity stress conditions due to tolerance against saline conditions. Based upon the overall performance, 10 cultivars were found to be tolerant, 3 cultivars were susceptible and 56 cultivars were highly susceptible to salinity stress among the 69 tested cultivars of soybean.