Phenotyping of Salt Stress Hybrid Maize through Hydroponic Culture at Seedling Stage

Maize (Zea mays L.) grows in wide range of agro-ecological environment of the world. Production of maize throughout the world is an evocation to meet global food security. For agriculture, salinity is one of the principal challenges in salt affected zones of the world. An efficient study of 45 test-cross hybrids maize was carried out in a hydroponic culture to find out desirable salt tolerant maize hybrids with two levels of salinity (0 dS m-1 and 12 dS m-1 NaCl). Ten days old maize seedlings were transplanted to hydroponic pot, seedlings were evaluated after 18 days exposure of salinity. Significant variations were observed for all parameters except root shoot ratio and root dry weight of the all hybrids. Path analysis indicated that SDW (shoot dry weight) highly reliable component of total dry matter. The first five principal components (PCs) explained about 96.0% of the total variation. Cluster analysis placed the 45 hybrid into 5 main groups; among those clusters, group III showed the highest number of relative mean value of traits. From the genotype × traits bi-plot of eight traits of 45 genotypes, the highest positive relationship found in MSL (maximum shoot length), SDW (shoot dry weight) and SPAD, RDW (root dry weight) traits. Through analysis it was concluded that P-16 x IPB911-16 was most salt tolerant genotypes, followed by P-14 x IPB911-16 and P-19 x IPB911-16 and very susceptible genotypes were CZI-26 x IPB911-16, CZI-08 x IPB911-16, P-62 x IPB911-16 and P-1 x IPB911-16. The selected hybrids will be helpful for future maize breeding to develop salt tolerant hybrid maize.