| Abstrakt: |
RICEBEAN (Vigna umbellata) is an underutilized legume rich in essential amino acids methionine and tryptophan. It has many useful features like tolerance to aluminium toxicity, resistance to storage pest and yellow mosaic virus. Nevertheless, features related to salinity stress remain mostly unexplored. An integrated approach to plant growth analysis and marker-assisted selection paves the way for identifying salt tolerant varieties. Therefore, the present investigation aims to screen ricebean lines for salinity tolerance. Thirty ricebean lines were screened and contrasting lines were identified at the seedling level based on the salinity induction response (SIR) technique. Based on the SIR technique two tolerant (EC-48 and RBL-6), one moderately tolerant (KBR-1) and two susceptible lines (IC-6 and IC-23) were identified and subjected to the salinity stress at whole plant level in the pots. As salinity levels increased, morphological parameters i.e., height, number of leaves, number of branches, leaf area, biomass, number of pods / plant and seeds / pod decreased. With increasing salinity stress, the physiological parameters, i.e., chlorophyll content, decreased, while proline content, cell membrane damage and Na+/K+ ratio increased. The results showed that, at the seedling level, the lines selected as tolerant / sensitive behaved similarly at the whole plant level. Fourteen SSR primers were used to identify the polymorphic markers among five ricebean genotypes. Two primers RBCEDG073 and RBCEDG015 were polymorphic. If these lines are used for breeding salinity-tolerant ricebean cultivars in the future, the identified polymorphic marker will be useful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
