Quantitative trait loci for salinity tolerance in barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) Gaofeng Zhou • Peter Johnson • Peter R. Ryan • Emmanuel Delhaize • Meixue Zhou Received: 7 January 2011 / Accepted: 26 February 2011 / Published online: 3 May 2011 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011 Abstract Salinity stress is a major limitation in barley production. Substantial genetic variation in tolerance occurs among genotypes of barley, so the development of salt-tolerant cultivars is a potentially effective approach for minimizing yield losses. The lack of economically viable methods for screening salinity tolerance in the field remains an obstacle to breeders, and molecular marker-assisted selection is a promising alternative. In this study, salinity tolerance of 172 doubled-haploid lines generated from YYXT (salinity-tolerant) and Franklin (salinity-sensitive) was assessed in glasshouse trials during the vegeta- tive phase. A high-density genetic linkage map was constructed from 76 pairs of simple sequence repeats and 782 Diversity Arrays Technology markers which spanned a total of 1,147 cM. Five significant quan- titative trait loci (QTL) for salinity tolerance were identified on chromosomes 1H, 2H, 5H, 6H and 7H, accounting for more than 50% of the phenotypic variation. The tolerant variety, YYXT, contributed the tolerance to four of these QTL and Franklin contributed the tolerance to one QTL on chromosome 1H. Some of these QTL mapped to genomic regions previously associated with salt tolerance in barley and other cereals. Markers associated with the major QTL identified in this study have potential applica- tion for marker-assisted selection in breeding for enhanced salt tolerance in barley. Keywords Barley Á QTL Á Salinity Introduction Salinity is a major abiotic stress affecting crop production. About 6% of the world’s total land area is affected by salt (FAO 2008). From a total of 260 million hectares of irrigated land, about 30 million are severely damaged by the build-up of salts, another 80 million hectares are affected to some degree, and 1.5 million hectares are estimated to be lost from produc- tion every year as a result of salt build-up (FAO 2000). Primary salinity arises naturally as rocks weather to release soluble chloride salts (especially sodium, calcium and magnesium) and to a lesser extent, sulphate and carbonate salts (Szabolcs 1989). Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s11032-011-9559-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. G. Zhou National Maize Improvement Center of China, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100193, People’s Republic of China G. Zhou Á P. Johnson Á M. Zhou (&) Tasmanian Institute of Agricultural Research, University of Tasmania, P.O. Box 46, Kings Meadows, TAS 7249, Australia e-mail: mzhou@utas.edu.au G. Zhou Á P. R. Ryan Á E. Delhaize CSIRO Plant Industry, GPO Box 1600, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia 123 Mol Breeding (2012) 29:427–436 DOI 10.1007/s11032-011-9559-9