An integrated approach for screening of chickpea genotypes for salinity tolerance

An experiment was conducted with eight genotypes of chickpea to provide useful parameters for screening against salinity stress. Plants were raised under 0, 4, 6 and 8dSm⁻¹ of chloride predominant salinity. Salinity affected membrane injury, chlorophyll stability index (CSI) and K/Na ratio of fully expanded leaves of 8 week old plants and yield adversely and the extent of reduction was found to vary with the genotype. Computation of the results on the basis of double ranking system i.e ‘absolute value rank’ and ‘per cent change rank’ revealed the tolerance of chickpea genotypes in the decreasing order; KC-1>HC-3>C235>IPC94-94>Pusa256>HC-1>CSG9505>HC-5. Spearman's rank correlation (rs) and coefficient of concordance of these parameters with yield (w) has revealed positive and significant results on the basis of ‘per cent change rank’ than ‘absolutevalue rank’.