* Correspondence: Meixue Zhou; Email: Meixue.zhou@utas.edu.au

Improving wheat production efficiency on saline-alkali land is of long-term strategic importance in addressing food security and worsening soil salinization issues. Screening genotypes which can complete their life cycle under saline conditions is the key to breeding wheat varieties for salinity tolerance.

Most of the previous screenings are mainly on the seedling stage. In our preliminary screening trial under a high level of salinity (320 mM NaCl), and H-093 showed significant difference in salinity tolerance in the seedling stage with H-135 being more tolerant than H-093. In this study, these two genotypes were grown under a continuous moderate salinity stress (150mM NaCl) for the entire life cycle.

Salt stress inhibited the growth performance of wheat, as evidenced by the reduced leaf area index (LAI), number of tillers, dry matter accumulation (DW), NDVI and harvest index (HI). Under moderate salinity stress, there were no significant differences in salinity tolerance between these two genotypes at the flowering stage with both genotypes showing similar reductions in plant height, tiller number and biomass production.

The significant differences between genotypes were primarily observed during the late growth (grain filling) stage. The grain number per spike (GN) declined 32% in H-093 while there was no significant decrease in H-135 due to reduced fertility of H-093.

Thousand-grain-weight (TGW) showed the greatest reduction with H-093 showing nearly 60% reduction while H-135 only having 27% reduction. H-093 showed a much greater yield reduction (79%) than H-135 (38%).