UTAH
USDA-ARS FORAGE & RANGE RESEARCH LABORATORY
Utah State University, Logan, UT 84322-6300, U.S.A.
http://www.usu.edu/forage/frrl.htm
Richard R.-C. Wang.
Two salt-tolerant wheat germ plasm lines, W4909 and W4910, were jointly released by USDA-ARS and Utah Agricultural Experiment Station in 2002. The lines have been registered in Crop Science as GP-730 and GP-731, PI 631164 and PI 631165, respectively.
W4909 and W4910 had been compared to the known salt-tolerant cultivars Kharchia 65, KRL 1-4, KRL 19, Lu 26S, and Shorawaki in a 2003 greenhouse experiments. Both W4909 and W4910 are equal to Shorawaki in survival after salinity treatment at EC = 42 dS/m, whereas all the other lines had lower survival rates. At the end of the salinity treatment, W4909 and W4910 had more tillers than Shorawaki. After being moved to potting medium without salt solution, W4909 and W4910 produced more seeds/spike than Shorawaki. W4910 had the highest number of spikes/plant, followed by Shorawaki and W4909.
The F3 families of 'Yecora Rojo/W4909' and 'Yecora Rojo/W4910' exhibited transgression segregation for salt-tolerance and agronomic traits. W4909 and W4910 were found to have salt tolerance mechanisms other than NaCl exclusion. Therefore, we can enhance salt tolerance by gene pyramiding with crosses of W4909 or W4910 and other salt-tolerant wheat cultivars having NaCl avoidance as the mechanism.