IDENTIFYING SUITABLE TEMPERATE FORAGE LEGUME SPECIES FOR SALINE AREAS

The salt tolerance of 29 lines of annual and perennial forage legume s pecies was evaluated in 4 separate experiments over 0-100 mol NaCl/m(3 ) 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 ge rmplasm including Trifolium tomentosum, 2 lines of T. squamosum and T. alexandrinum cvv. Mescani and Wardan which were all more salt toleran t than T. subterraneum. Two lines of Lotus tenuis and 1 line of L. cor niculatus were also relatively salt tolerant. Some of this material ha d never been assessed before under saline conditions. In contrast, sev eral 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 beli eve that further selection and field evaluation (including selection f or increased productivity and salt tolerance over a range of growth st ages) is required for the material that showed potential in order to f ully assess its performance under saline soil conditions.