Identifying suitable temperate forage legume species for saline areas

Abstract

Summary. The salt tolerance of 29 lines of annual and perennial forage legume species was evaluated in 4 separate experiments over 0–100 mol NaCl/m³ in the greenhouse with the aim of identifying genetic material that is more salt tolerant than the more traditionally grown forage legume species.

Several species or lines showed potential as salt-tolerant germplasm including Trifolium tomentosum, 2 lines of T. squamosum and T. alexandrinum cvv. Mescani and Wardan which were all more salt tolerant than T. subterraneum. Two lines of Lotus tenuis and 1 line of L. corniculatus were also relatively salt tolerant. Some of this material had never been assessed before under saline conditions. In contrast, several other species (T. arvense, T. vesiculosum, T. angustifolium and T. pratense) were found to be extremely salt sensitive and/or produced very small amounts of dry matter over all NaCl concentrations.

We believe that further selection and field evaluation (including selection for increased productivity and salt tolerance over a range of growth stages) is required for the material that showed potential in order to fully assess its performance under saline soil conditions.