SCREENING OF CHICKPEA GENOTYPES AGAINST SALINITY STRESS IN PETRI DISH ENVIRONMENT

Abstract

The leguminous crop chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) has a great potential for nutrition, antioxidants, proteins, lipids, and carbs. Due to concerns with soil salinity/sodicity and climate change, the area used for chickpea cultivation is shrinking daily and the overall yield has decreased. Ten varieties of chickpea were subjected to salinity stress in a petri dish at four different NaCl concentrations: 0 mM, 50 mM, 100 mM, and 150 mM in a controlled condition experiment. The findings of the experiment revealed that Chattan and KK-1 do not survive under salinity stress. While Punjab-2008 and KK-2 demonstrated strong resilience to salinity stress. The results showed that at 0 mM of NaCl, KK-2 and Punjab-2008 had the highest germination rates (99%), followed by Bittle-98 and CM-98 (98%) The Chattan and KK-1 do not exhibit any germination at 150 mM NaCl. The data showed that Fakhr-e-thal had the smallest Radicle length (0.05 cm) at 150 mM NaCl, whereas Bhakkar-2011 at 50 mM NaCl had the largest Radicle length (4.90 cm). In comparison to 0 mM NaCl, the plumule length (cm) of the various chickpea genotypes showed that Bhakkar-2011 had the longest plumules (3.09 cm), Chattan had the shortest (0.80 cm), and KK-1 had no values at the greatest salinity levels. It is therefore concluded that increasing salinity badly affects the germination and growth in chickpea, but this stress can be mitigated by using salinity resilient genotypes.