Rice is one of the world’s most important staple crops that offer food for more than 50% of the world’s population. It is estimated that by the year 2025, the need to increase in rice production will be around 21% over the production of the year 2000.
Salt stress undesirably affects plant growth during all developmental stages, therefore, it is a major threat to crop productivity. The response to salinity varies with growth stages, varieties/ genotypes, and of salinization. Several investigators have stated that salt exerts negative effect on seed germination and seedling growth.
Inhibition of seed germination and shoot and root was noticed as a result of sodium chloride treatments in rice . Also, some of researchers have found an adverse effect of salt on plant height, root, shoot and dry matter of rice genotypes. Salinity adverse effect on seed germination could be due either to osmotic effect or to ion toxicity. From all, I am going to assess the salt tolerance indices for almost 150 rice genotypes belonging to F9 . I need to know about the possible and newly released treatments , for salt stress assessment rather than regular treatments like NACL and CaCl2 . , on rice genotypes.
The salt can be leached out from the soil through tillage operations during heavy rains. But it is not an option to farmers during the dry season. The development of salt-tolerant rice varieties through molecular breeding can help. The varieties that have already been developed can tolerate mild salinity. Scientists have been trying to fine mapping of salt-tolerant genes of rice to develop varieties with higher salt-tolerance or to transfer genes from other salt-tolerant species to rice through transgenic breeding.
Some traditional landraces of rice can tolerate high amount of salt but their productivity is very low. The opportunity cost of rice cultivation with these traditional varieties may be high compared to growing non-rice crops such as sunflower, sesame, pumpkin, or chilly; or even keep the land fallow that saves the cost of labor in high-wage environment.
