Open AccessEffect of Terminal Drought Stress on Morpho-physiological Traits of Wheat Genotypes
Author(s) -
M. J. Baloch,
Irfan Ali Chandio,
Muhammad Asif Arain,
Abdul Majeed Baloch,
Wajid Ali Jatoi
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
pakistan journal of scientific and industrial research. series b: biological sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.117
H-Index - 5
eISSN - 2223-2567
pISSN - 2221-6421
DOI - 10.52763/pjsir.biol.sci.59.3.2016.117.125
Subject(s) - biology , cultivar , drought tolerance , agronomy , trait , drought stress , chlorophyll , moisture stress , genotype , morpho , horticulture , water content , botany , biochemistry , geotechnical engineering , computer science , gene , programming language , engineering
Development of wheat varieties with low moisture requirements and their ability to withstandmoisture stress may cope-up well with the on-coming peril of drought conditions. Ten wheat genotypesincluding two new strains, PBGST-3, Hero, Bhittai, Marvi, Inqlab, Sarsabz, Abadgar, Kiran, Khirman andPBGST-4 were sown in split plot design with factorial arrangement in four replications at ExperimentalField, Department of Plant Breeding & Genetics, Sindh Agricutlure University, Pakistan during 2012-13.The results revealed that water stress caused significant reductions in all morpho-physiological traits. Thegenotypes differed significantly for all the yield and physiological traits. The interaction of treatments ×genotypes were also significant for all the traits except plant height, productive tillers/plant, grains/spikeand harvest index, were non-significant which indicated that cultivars responded variably over the stress treatments suggesting that breeders can select the promising genotypes for both stress and non-stressenvironments. Among the genotypes evaluated Bhittai, Kiran-95, PBGST-3 and Sarsabz showed goodperformance as minimum reductions occurred under terminal stress conditions for all the traits studied.Hence, above mentioned genotypes were considered as drought tolerant group. The high positive correlationsof physiological traits like chlorophyll content and relative water content with almost all yield traits indicatedthat these physiological traits could serve as reliable criteria for breeding drought tolerance in wheat. Thenegative correlations of electrolyte leakage with several important yield traits indicated that though thisphysiological trait has adverse effect on yield attributes, yet it could reliably be used to distinguish betweendrought tolerant and susceptible wheat genotypes.