Hello, i am not an expert of paddy but i worked salt stress on poplar, i think you can measure classical parameters of growth comparisons like root, total number of leaves, total leaf area (leaf length) etc. and also you can check CO2 assimilation rate and stomatal conductance. For biochemical change, i dont know what is your aim but i worked on proteomic..

Anti-oxidant enzymes, photosynthetic pigments and çproline content are essential always to evaluate salt stress. PAM fluorometry can also give good and immediate insights about the effects of salt stress on plant light harvesting and PP

I studied effect of salt and sugar on chroloplast membranes and their lipid liposomes on ultrastructure and dynamics. May see my publications on researchgate here and interact.

Amino Acids, Charbohydrates, Protain, Proline, Pigments, + Water content, Frish and Dry weight, Leaf Area, Plant hight, Growth rate, Ion content.

Thank you very much guys for your answers. All are very helpful.

Apart from yield,observations on leaf necrosis, Na/K ratio will be very helpful.Observations on root characters along with therse gives further information. If stress level is higher, measuring electrolyte leakage gives information about cell membrane stability of different genotypes under stress.

Hello Selin, I think you can monitor the change of chlorophyll content and chlorofluorscence in paddy, these two indice are good parameters to evaluate salt tolerance in plants.

NaCl stress is a complex trait. As Dr. Duarte pointed out, PAM fluorescence can be used. All labs fluorimeter facility may not be available. Root tolerance and shoot tolerance indices can be used. Protein profile can be studied to understand whether there is any salt induced/suppressed proteins. The levels of proline, glycine beating can be studied

For the morphology measurements total leaf area and specific leaf area could prove useful in themselves, as well as help in roughly estimating canopy gas exchange if you are using leaf measurements. Another useful measure might be plant architecture/topology - basically branching patterns. These types of measures can be a useful addition to typical length and biomass measures. I found that root system fractal dimension and lacunarity were affected by soil saturation (vs field capacity). They are useful in that they give you an estimate of complexity without counting every node and root tip. I used rhizotrons. If you're doing a field experiment, working with the roots will obviously get more complicated.

Here's the article, let me know if you want a copy:

Pierce, S.C., M.B. Koontz, S.R. Pezeshki & R. Kröger. 2013. Response of Salix nigra [Marsh.] cuttings to horizontal asymmetry in soil saturation. Environmental and Experimental Botany 87: 137-147. Published online November 6, 2012: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envexpbot.2012.10.003.

There was a nice set of photos of drought-stressed maize leaves, published in, I think, the Agronomy Journal about 1970. Stressed leaves were more vertical, tended to roll up, had different surface appearance. A technician who was using a fancy leaf-moisture method reckoned she could predict the results just from plant appearance.

Dear Sekar,

You may look into our work, publications and reviews which clearly spells out the thrust to be given to salinity stress.

Dear

For testifying salinity stress, you must measure and calculate growth analyzing factors, and then in the base of changing in growth factors you can chose type of biochemical tests.

The change of chlorophyll content and chlorofluorscence in paddy, these two indice are good parameters to evaluate salt tolerance in plants.

Under NaCl stress,shoot/root ratio,No. & area of leaf,relative growth rate (RGR),No. of fruits & seeds per fruit,wt. of seeds can be taken taken as morphological parameters. For biochemical parameters,chlorophyll,different sugar fractions,protein and non protein nitrogen,amylase & protease activity may be taken into account.One very important biochemical parameter is proline as it provides some sort of resistance against stress conditions

Excellence is Doing an ordinary thing in an extraordinary way

"Some thing is better than nothing"

If we add a para daily after one month it will result in a productive item (paper , review, thesis , chapter, etc.etc.) So start from today

Dear All

I am pleased to inform u , after successful publication of two books i have started compiling another one or two books depending upon response from authors and dedicated scientists like you) in the aspect of crop improvement

The themes are

1. plant breeding in relation to crop improvement( biotic, abiotic stress, quality improvement, etc)

2. Plant bioticjnology aspects of crop improvement( biotic, abiotic stress, quality improvement,) both Marker assisted selection AND TRANSGENIC APPROACH/ CISGENIC APPROACH/ other in vitro techniques etc.)

3. Molecular breeding/QTLS biotic, abiotic stress, quality improvement

4 Plant genetic resources , conservation and its application in crop improvement

5. Crop specific breeding approaches like rice , wheat , maize or other horticultural crops

6. Hybrid technology and status of hybrid breeding in various crop plants

7. Molecular farming

8. Plant plastid/chloroplast engineering

9.Genome sequencing of major crop plants

10. other aspects related to crop improvement

Interested scientists , students are requested to send in their titles and abstracts from the above themes before 30 September 2013 for finalization. Selection of papers will be on first come first serve basis.

Interested scientists who want to be co editors can also send in their interest

For any further query kindly contact

[email protected]

shabirhwani@[email protected]

Kindest regards

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Thanks & Regards

Shabir Hussain Wani Ph.D, F.S.P.R

Assistant Professor

AICRP NSP (Crops), Division of Plant Breeding and Genetics

SKUAST-K, Shalimar, Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, India 190025

Mobile : +91 9419035566/ +91 9797001791

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Thanks & Regards

Shabir Hussain Wani Ph.D, F.S.P.R

Assistant Professor

AICRP NSP (Crops), Division of Plant Breeding and Genetics

SKUAST-K, Shalimar, Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, India 190025

Mobile : +91 9419035566/ +91 9797001791

http://www.skuastkashmir.a

Thanks for starting a nice interesting series with lot of basic and practical implications. Our group at Central Soil Salinity Research Institute, Karnal in India has done extensive fundamental physiological and genetic studies leading to successful development and release of 15 Salt Tolerant Varieties (STVs) , of which 7 rice varieties including a Basmati scented variety. These STVs have been popular and adopted by farmers in large areas during the last two decades. Rice is known to be salt sensitive plant. You can see some of our papers and I will be happy to provide you these.

Salt stress affects a whole lot of plant growth and physiological processes and response to salts make it a multi-genic and complex character , thereby increasing the difficulties to improve crop salt tolerance. It is a challenge worth pursuing as lot of lands are salt affected and humanity needs to increase food production to meet the needs of a burgeoning populations, more particularly in the developing world.

I've only just come across this topic, so apologies for the late contribution. Regarding salt stress in rice, I have two general comments. The first is that the research group of Professor Tim Flowers at University of Sussex, UK in the 1980s did extensive research on salt tolerance in rice and identified mechanisms with which rice tolerated salt stress. Those publications would probably give good information on traits to look at. The second comment relates to research of my own selecting for improved salt tolerance in wheat. Two selection methods were compared. One was based on good agronomy under non-stressed field conditions. The second was under only saline field conditions. After several generations of selection, the 20 best-yielding in non-stressed and 20 best-yielding in stressed field conditions were then compared in both a saline hydroponics glasshouse experiment and a saline field micro-yield trial. The 20 best-yielding selections from the saline field selection method outyielded the 20 best-yielding selections from the non-stressed selection method and retained more chlorophyll and excluded salt better from leaves in saline hydroponics. In the saline field trial the results were the OPPOSITE. The best-yielding selections under non-stressed conditions OUTYIELDED those from the saline field selection programme. Funding for the research then stopped, so we were never able to establish why! So, be cautious about the methods used to select for better salt tolerance! Cheers, Steve