Cotton being an important cash crop of India plays a distinguished role in energizing the economy of the country by fetching appreciable amount of foreign exchange annually. The cotton production of country is improving significantly but the yield per unit area is still lower than that of the other countries due to some biotic and abiotic factors. Amongst the abiotic stresses, salinity is a serious threat next to drought. Keeping in view, the present study was conducted to assess the salt tolerance of 32 popular upland varieties released for general cultivation between 1980 and 2001 in India. The study was carried out in normal as well as saline-alkaline condition; in which salinity were created using bore well water irrigation and the average electrical conductivity level of bore well water is 3.10 ds/m. The 32 upland cotton genotypes under both salinity and normal conditions revealed high GCV and genetic gain for number of bolls per plant, boll weight, lint yield per plant, 2.5 per cent span length, leaf area index, Na-K ratio and seed cotton yield and these traits could be improved by simple selection. Correlation and path analysis studies revealed that the seed cotton yield was highly influenced by lint yield per plant in both normal and salinealkaline condition. Significant positive correlations exists between Bartlett's rate index with uniformity ratio, 2.5 per cent span length with bundle strength, uniformity ratio with micronaire and elongation percent, specific leaf area with leaf area index. These results clearly indicated that selection for any one of these traits might lead to concurrent improvement of other traits as well as seed cotton yield. The characters boll weight (-0.347), ginning out turn (-0.528), 2.5% span length (-0.312) and uniformity ratio (-0.440) registered high order negative direct effect on seed cotton yield. This result further confirms the negative association between the quality and yield.
