Evaluation of Salinity Tolerant Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) Genotypes through Multivariate Analysis of Agronomic Traits

Background: Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is the second major global cereals mostly grown in winter season which led wheat plants to suffer with salinity stress. Twenty to thirty percent of the arable land of the world is present in the saline area. Therefore, it is necessary to develop salinity tolerant wheat varieties to meet the future food demand. Methods: A field experiment was carried out during November 2018 to March 2019 to observe the effect of salinity on yield and other desired plant characters and finally screening of wheat genotypes for salinity tolerance. The experiment was laid out in a complete randomized design containing three treatments with three replications. The treatments were three levels of salinity such as control, 8 dS m-1 and 15 dS m-1. Multivariate and principal components analysis was executed to evaluate yield and other plant characters. Result: The results of the experiment revealed that different plant characters showed wide range of variation under different salinity levels. Biplot analysis considering PC1 and PC2 revealed that grain yield was positively correlated with grain spike-1, spike length, thousand seed weight and total tiller plant-1. Correlation study also revealed that total tiller plant-1, spikelet spike-1, grain spike-1 and thousand seed weight showed significant and positive relation with grain yield plant-1. On the basis of yield reduction percent and yield the genotypes G12 (2.51 g), G16 (2.49 g) and G4 (2.19 g) were found suitable for 15 dS m-1 salinity.