Salt, Cold, and Drought Stress on Einkorn and Bread Wheat during Germination

Abstract

Climate changes prompt salt, cold, and drought stresses especially during early crop growth stages. The damages during germination in wheat may even destroy whole crop. Here, 12 bread and 10 einkorn wheats entries were distressed under salt, cold and drought. Germination rate and germination power, coleoptile, shoot length, root length, shoot to root length ratio, root fresh and dry weight and root fresh to dry weight ratio were quantified under six salt, cold, drought stresses and one control. After ANOVA and LSD discriminated the entries, stress tolerance indices differentiated six tolerant and six susceptible entries. MANOVA, Pillai’s Trace and Wilks’ Lambda tests finalized the stress testing. Shoot and root length, root fresh and dry weight highly differed under salt, cold and drought. Bayraktar-2000 well tolerated salt, drought, salt-drought and salt-cold-drought; Gerek-79 salt, salt-drought, salt-cold-drought; Momtchil salt, cold and salt-cold-drought; İkizce-96 salt, drought and salt-drought. Einkorn Population 14 was susceptible to all stresses except cold and salt-cold; Population 15 to salt, salt-drought and salt-cold-drought; Population 11 to salt, drought, salt-drought and salt-cold-drought. These stresses sharply decreased shoot and root length, root fresh and root dry weight. The higher % decreases under salt, cold and drought were in shoot (59.72, 63.25 and 23.17) and root length (32.91, 51.77 and 34.69), root fresh (44.32, 49.11 and 38.88) and root dry weight (21.63, 42.14 and 41.97). Moreover, Pillai’s trace and Wilks’ Lambda tests differentiated both characters and entries (P < 0.01). In conclusion, Momtchil, Gerek-79, Bayraktar-2000, Populations 5, 6, and 1 are well endorsed against triple seedling stresses.

Keywords

• bread wheat (triticum aestivum l.)
• einkorn (t. monococcum ssp. monococcum)
• cold
• drought
• salt