MITIGATION OF SALT STRESS IN WHEAT (Triticum aestivum L.) BY EXOGENOUS APPLICATION OF SELENIUM

Abstract

Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.), is a significant grain plant with great nutritional content that can support global food security. One significant abiotic stress that significantly hinders wheat productivity, particularly in arid areas, is salinity. To examine the effect of selenium (Se) under salt stress (SS) in BWMRI Gom 1, a pot experiment was carried out at the Agronomy Shade House, Department of Agronomy, Hajee Mohammad Danesh Science and Technology University, Dinajpur-5200, Bangladesh, during November 2022 to April, 2023. The conducted experiment comprised six salt stress treatments viz., i) S0Se0 (0 mM NaCl + 0 µM Se), ii) S100Se0(100 mM NaCl + 0 µM Se), iii) S100Se5 (100 mM NaCl +5 µM Se), iv) S100Se10 (100 mM NaCl + 10 µM Se), v) S100Se15 (100 mM NaCl + 15 µM Se), vi) S100Se20 (100 mM NaCl + 20 µM Se). The experiment was laid out in Completely Randomized Design (CRD) with three replications. The data were recorded including morphological features such as plant height, leaf number, flag leaf area, and fresh and dry weight of leaves, stems, and roots across all growth periods. Other penological indices and physiological features, including as canopy temperature, chlorophyll content, water status (RWC, WSD, WRC, WUC), and membrane stability index, were also lowered by salt stress. At harvest, salt stress reduced the number of spicklets spike-1, spike length (cm), number of grains spike-1, 100 grain weight (g), grain yield (g plant-1), stover yield (g plant-1), biological yield (g plant-1), harvest index (%), and nutrient content. The recorded data were analyzed through using Statistics-10 program, and mean difference was compared by LSD at 5% level of probability. The results indicated that SS significantly and negatively affected the aforesaid parameters, while application of Se in salt stressed-plants alleviated the adverse effects of SS, and positively influenced of those traits of BWMRI Gom 1. Most of the cases, the treatment Se20 under SS conditions (100 mM) showed the most positive effects which were statistically matched with the control condition. At SS, the treatment S100Se20 (100 mM NaCl + 20 µM Se) showed the highest positive values of morphology, growth, penology, chlorophyll contents, water status, canopy temperature, yield contributing traits, grain quality (K, Ca, N and Protein%) and finally crop harvests (grain yield, stover yield, biological yield, and harvest index) which were very nearly to S0Se0. However, the Se application reduced the amount of Na. Therefore, in order to mitigate the negative effects of salt stress and enhance wheat development and production, our findings suggest applying exogenous Se (20 µM).