Oat is an important cereal crop commonly used for food, feed and forage due to its high nutritional quality and beneficial effects on human health and livestock productivity (Choubey et al., 2003).In the last few decades, salinity has emerged as a major threat to crop production, as it influences the plant growth at different developmental stages. Notably, almost 80 million ha of the world's arable land is prone to salinity stress with globally 20% (45 million ha) of irrigated and 2% (32 million ha) of dry lands constrained by salinity (Munns, 2005). Intensity of salt affected soils is expected to be aggravated in the coming years due to unsustainable irrigation, traces of toxic sodium containing salts in irrigation water and rising water tables (Deinlein et al., 2014). Global climate changes scenarios, such as drought and heat, result in excessive evaporation and salt accumulation in the soil, which also increases soil salinity at the rate of 10% annually (Shrivastava & Kumar, 2015;Tester, 2003;Zhu et al., 2015). Salinization under field conditions is a global problem and a crucial factor to limit oat production and productivity. Oat is reported to have moderate tolerance to salinity and it can be grown in soil having high salt concentrations and high pH (Bai et al., 2013).However, studies on evaluating the morpho-physiological and