Salt Tolerance of Guar and Its Improvement by 'in Vitro' Mutagenesis

Present investigation was conducted on clusterbean to study the effect of chloride dominated salinity on growth and to explore the possibility of induction of salinity tolerance through deployment of EMS. Accumulation of soluble sugars and free proline in leaves with salinity is indicative of osmotic adjustment of leaves to some extent but decline in protein and starch content is possibly due to ion toxicity. cotyledonary node was found be the best explant and MSB5 medium + 2mgl-1 2,4-D and 1mgl-1 BAP supported best callus growth. 200 mM NaCl was found to be the lethal. Culturing of EMS treated calli on NaCl adjunct medium showed no significant growth of callus upto 2.0h EMS treatment. An increase of duration of EMS treatment beyond 2.0h supported growth of callus which increased upto 3.0h. in general increased starch, protein content, proline content and sodium content on salt amended medium over respective control while it decreased chloride content over respective control. NaCl induced new bands of MW 57.54, 28.18, 26.92 and 20.89 kDa Culturing of these calli on salt amended medium revealed presence of polypeptide bands of MW 67.61, 53.70, 50.12, 28.84, 20.89 and 18.62 kDa.