Genetic Analysis of Salt Tolerance in Safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.)

Aim: The mode of agronomic traits inheritance was investigated in safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.) in salt stress as a new report in this study.
Place and Duration of Study: This experiment was carried out in Agricultural Research Farm of Shahid Bahonar University at Ekhtiarabad, Kerman, Iran, in 2011 -2012.
Methodology: Five generation including P1, P2, F1, F2 and F3 that derived from the cross of IL.111 (salt sensitive) × Mex.22-191 (salt tolerance) were used in a randomized complete block design with two replications.
Results: According to generation mean analysis, different types of gene action was obtained for studied traits. The additive model [d] was fitted for branches/plant, seeds/capsule and seed yield/plant. The simple additive - dominance model [d, h] was fitted for number of seeds/plant. Also, dominance× dominance epistasis [l] was added to fit the model as [d, h, l] for capsule/plant and dry weight/plant. The genetic model of [d,h,i] and [d, i] was fitted for genetic control of plant height and seed weight, respectively.
Conclusion: Obtained results could be suitable for designing of breeding strategies to improve seed yield of safflower in salt stress.