EVALUATING SALT TOLERANT COTTON GENOTYPES AT DIFFERENT LEVELS OF NaCl STRESS IN SOLUTION AND SOIL CULTURE

The study was carried out to compare generally used screening methods for salt tolerance: (i) a seedling-based, solution culture method, (ii) plant yield-based, soil method. The physiological and ionic analyses were used for comparisons of methodologies along with yield in soil based systems. The two methods were similar to each other by reproducing similar rankings for genotypes across the methods. In solution culture experiment, genotypes FH-113 and FH-911 produced significantly more (83 and 81% of control respectively) fresh weight compared to the rest of cotton genotypes, while in saline soil conditions the reduction was minimum in tolerant genotype FH-113 with magnitude of 40% in boll weight and 37% in number of bolls plant at 21 dS m with respect to control. The reduction in yield was much higher in salt sensitive genotype FH-5015 (47-75% of control) at 21 dS m. The saline soil experiment demonstrated a higher sensitivity for discriminating Na response among genotypes for yield reduction. It was concluded that solution culture selection approach can be helpful for the screening of cotton genotypes for salt tolerance, if using selective physiological traits and criteria.