The use of carbon-isotope discrimination to screen wheat cultivars for tolerance of salinity and drought

Stable carbon isotope determinations provide time-integrated measures of plant physiological activities and plant interactions with the environment. In these experiments the effects of soil salinity on carbon isotope discrimination were studied. The classical method of selection of wheat cultivars based on yield performance under saline conditions has been largely unsuccessful. Also, physiological traits such as dry matter (DM), water use efficiency (WUE), and harvest index (HI) have been used as alternatives to screening for yield. Carbon-13 discrimination (Δ) is an integrated measure of the response of photosynthetic gas exchange to environmental variables such as water availability, light, humidity, and salinity, and has been shown to be a useful tool in the selection of cultivars for drought tolerance. Despite similarities between the effects of water and salt stresses on plant growth, few attempts have been made to quantify the effect of salinity on Δ, and its potential as a breeding selection characteristic, aimed at increasing grain yield under saline conditions. The objectives of this experiment were to study the effect of soil salinity on Δ in salt- and drought-tolerant wheat cultivars under well watered and water-limiting conditions, and to evaluate the relationship between DM, WUE, and HI under the two levels of moisture