Effects of Salinity and Drought Stress on Grain Quality of Durum Wheat

Abstract

This work aimed to assess the influences of soil salinity and drought stresses on grain quality characteristics of selected salt-tolerant genotypes differing in salinity tolerance in durum wheat. This study was conducted under control, drought, and saline field conditions in separate experiments during 2 years. A randomized complete block design with three replications was used for each experiment. The results showed significant effects of genotype and environmental conditions on all grain-quality related traits. Salt and drought stress caused the significant increment of grain protein content, wet and dry gluten contents, and sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) sedimentation volume. Thousand-grain weight, grain protein yield, and test weight reduced significantly under both salinity and drought stress conditions. Protein content showed positive correlation with wet gluten, dry gluten, SDS sedimentation, and volume and strong negative correlation with other traits. It is concluded that influence of salinity stress was greater than drought stress on grain protein yield and some other grain-quality-related traits.

Keywords:

• Drought
• durum wheat
• grain quality
• saline field
• salt tolerance

Acknowledgment

The technical assistance from B. Bahrami at Laboratory of Food Technology is gratefully acknowledged.