Comparative Quantitative Gene Expression analysis Between Salinity Tolerant and Susceptible Varieties of Chickpea

Salinity is one of the greatest limiting factors in agriculture. Therefore, the ability of plants to adapt saline conditions is crucial to sus-tain worldwide crop production. Present study is meant to identify gene specific markers for salt tolerance in Chickpea. Selected chickpea geno-types were already characterized for salt tolerance and susceptibility. Sixteen gene specif-ic primers were designed from already identified abiotic stress resistant genes from database among which five were used for semi-quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction. The expression levels of two of them allow discrimination between toler-ant and susceptible genotypes. In tolerant genotypes (JG-62 and Pusa 1053) the expression level of these genes was higher as compared to susceptible genotypes (BG-256 and ICCV2). For primer 13 the relative fold increase in gene expression was 10 times as compared to 2 times in susceptible plants. For primer 6 the relative fold increase in gene expression was 5 folds in Pusa 1053 (tolerant) as compared to 4 folds in other geno-types. Gene expression was observed to be maxi-mum at 200mM concentration in almost all gen-otypes for above two gene specific primers. So, primer 13 is a potent gene for gene pyramiding in susceptible varieties for salt stress.