Low-cost and reliable substrate-based phenotyping platform for screening salt tolerance of cutting propagation-dependent grass, paspalum vaginatum.

Background: Salt tolerance in plants is defined as their ability to grow and complete their life cycle under saline conditions. Staple crops have limited salt tolerance, but forage grass can survive in large unexploited saline areas of costal or desert land. However, due to the restriction of self-incompatible fertilization in many grass species, vegetative propagation via stem cuttings is the dominant practice; this is incompatible with current methodologies of salt-tolerance phenotyping, which have been developed for germination-based seedling growth.