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Deficiency of micronutrients is a major problem faced by nearly half of the world population due to intake of poor-quality food. To overcome the problem of malnutrition, biofortification of cereal crops is believed to be a good approach to increase nutrient contents in our daily food. The purpose of the current study was therefore to investigate the effect of foliar applied copper and boron alone and in combination with Trichoderma harzianum on yield attributes, grain quality, and nutrient contents of wheat. Wheat plants were treated with copper and boron in combination with or without T. harzianum. The applied treatments included Cu (0.05 M), Cu (0.1 M), T. harzianum, Cu (0.05 M)/T. harzianum, Cu (0.1 M)/T. harzianum, B (0.05 M), B (0.1 M), B (0.05 M)/T. harzianum, B (0.1 M)/T. harzianum, Cu (0.05 M)/B (0.05 M)/T. harzianum, and Cu (0.1 M)/B (0.1 M)/T. harzianum along with a control set for comparison. Results revealed significant enhancement in different studied growth traits including plant height, spike length, kernels per spike, harvest index, and chlorophyll content. In addition, this approach also enriched wheat grains with various micro/macronutrients including Cu, Fe, Zn, K, and P. This study concludes that the bioreagent T. harzianum along with foliar copper and boron may lead to reasonably enhanced grain quality and growth characteristics of wheat, further suggesting that the combined application of micronutrients along with T. harzianum under suitable conditions will make it an acceptable approach for crop improvements.

Performance of nine selected wheat cultivars (Triticum aestivum L.) was studied during 1995-1996 under saline field environments at village Gundhari, distt. Nowshera. Site soil is recent river alluvium, sandy loam to clay loam in texture, slightly to highly saline and irrigated with tubewell water of 4 dS mG 1. Two adjacent fields were surveyed by EM 38 at 2×2 m to identify areas of uniform salinity. Increase of root zone salinity decreased progressively all the plant traits including grain yield and yield component. Grain and straw yield were reduced by 69 and 64 percent respectively at the highest salinity level. Salinity tolerance ranking of cultivars based on absolute grain yield was SARC 3 > Bakhtawar 92 > Kharchia 65 > Blue Silver > SARC 1 > WS 10 > Mutant 1 > KTDH 10 > TW 161. Leaf Na increased, K and K/Na ratio decreased significantly with increase of root zone salinity. Sodium exclusion and K/Na discriminatory accumulation in leaf had contributed salt tolerance to wheat crop but these relationship could not be established in all cultivars. Materials and Methods The research trial was conducted in salt affected area at Gundhari, near Risalpur air base, Nowshera. The site soil is Kabul river alluvium. The soil has stratified profile with light to medium texture and varying in salinity and sodicity status. Only source of irrigation is farmer's tubewell, the water having salinity hazard of 4 dS mG 1 .

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