Genome-wide association mapping for salinity recovery of rice seedlings grown in hydroponic and field conditions

Salinity stress significantly impacts global food production by hindering crop growth and reducing cultivable land. Efforts to develop salinity-tolerant rice varieties have faced challenges due to the complexity of salinity tolerance traits and a lack of suitable genetic donors. One complexity of salinity stress is that fluctuating degrees of severity often occur over a rice growing season, which may require plants to recover quickly as salinity levels temporarily decrease. This study evaluated salinity recovery in 256 diverse rice accessions, including 230 from the 3K Rice Genomes Project. Key physiological traits were measured, indicating accessions that outperformed the salinity-tolerant variety FL478, three of which were common in both the field and in hydroponics: BRRI dhan 47, Kalar Kar and WAS 170-B-B-1-1.…