Salinity tolerance at seed germination and early seedling stage in mini core collection of pearl millet [Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R. Br.]

Lathika, A U and Doddagoudar, S R and Pattanashetti, S K and Vikram, T H (2026) Salinity tolerance at seed germination and early seedling stage in mini core collection of pearl millet [Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R. Br.]. Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution (TSI), 73. pp. 1-26. ISSN 0925-9864

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Abstract

Pearl millet [Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R. Br.] is grown for food and forage in arid and semi-arid tropical regions of south Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Salinity stress has become a serious threat to pearl millet cultivation in these marginal environments. Seed germination and early seedling stage are most prone to salinity stress and critical for crop establishment. To identify diverse germplasm sources of salinity tolerance, the mini core collection of pearl millet (238 accessions) along with eight accessions used as controls including mini core controls (IP3616, IP3757, IP6098, IP6105), salinity tolerant (IP10876, IP10878, IP18406) and susceptible controls (IP17862) were subjected to preliminary evaluation for salinity tolerance at seed germination and early seedling stage using factorial completely randomized design under control and moderate level of salinity stress (100 mM NaCl) conditions in a laboratory experiment. Enormous genetic variability and significant reduction under salinity stress were noted for salinity related traits; i.e., germination, root length, shoot length, seedling dry weight, and seedling vigour indices (SVI–1, SVI–2). Principal component analysis for six-salinity related traits grouped mini core (238) and controls (8) into six distinct clusters. The highly salinity tolerant germplasm were grouped in cluster 1 (33 accessions; controls IP3616, IP10876, IP18406) and from this cluster, based on lesser percent reduction under salinity stress across six traits, the best 10 promising sources from the mini core were chosen, and subjected to detailed evaluation at different salinity levels (0, 100, 150, 200, 250 mM NaCl) to confirm their tolerance at higher levels of salinity and also assess critical and maximum level of salinity tolerance in pearl millet as a species. These promising sources could tolerate 100 mM comfortably, but drastic reduction for salinity related traits was noted at 150 mM and onwards with significant genotypic differences. Only two highly salinity tolerant accessions; i.e., IP14294 and IP21312 recorded more than 80% seed germination at 150 mM, suggesting it to be the critical limit of salinity that pearl millet as a species can tolerate at seed germination and early seedling stage and any higher salinity levels would not be tolerable.

Item Type:	Article
Divisions:	Genebank
CRP:	UNSPECIFIED
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Genetic variability, Mini core, Pearl millet, Salinity tolerance, Seed germination, Seedling stage
Subjects:	Mandate crops > Millets > Pearl Millet Others > Seeds/Seed Bank Others > Gene Bank
Depositing User:	Mr Nagaraju T
Date Deposited:	19 May 2026 05:23
Last Modified:	19 May 2026 05:23
URI:	http://oar.icrisat.org/id/eprint/13629
Official URL:	https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10722-0...
Projects:	UNSPECIFIED
Funders:	UNSPECIFIED
Acknowledgement:	The authors sincerely acknowledge the facilities received from Department of Seed Science and Technology, University of Agricultural Sciences, Raichur, India to carry out this research. This study was part of M.Sc. research of the first author. We acknowledge the receipt of experimental material; i.e., pearl millet mini core collection and controls for this study from ICRISAT Genebank, Patancheru, India.
Links:	Google Scholar

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