Genetic variability of drought adaptive traits and their association with drought tolerance vital for development of drought tolerant wheat cultivars

Abstract

Manute Siddig, Salva al-Mirghani, and Alexander Mayardit

Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) occupied 17 percentage of the total cultivated land in the world whereas it has contributed major role to maintain the Nepalese agricultural gross domestic products (MOAC, 2012) but area of cultivation has been decreasing. Moreover, potential yield of popular varieties have reduced by the effect of drought. To combat from drought loss, tolerant variety is one of the major solutions to address that issue. From this point of view, an experiment was conducted in split plot design from November 2009 to May 2010. The result showed significant variations among both for genotypes as well as to both level of water management. The average leaf area were reduced by 8.80 cm2 , 0.2655 kg biomass yield, 6.64 g thousand kernel weight, 4.11 booting days, 3.23 heading days, 1.26 flag leaf senescence and 0.0706 kg yield in drought condition. Similarly, WK1123 has least drought susceptibility index for yield. However, relative water content and chlorophyll content were correlated significantly with yield. To conclude, genotypes WK1701, WK1444, WK1123, 3EBWYT513 and 3EBWYT512 considered as the most drought tolerant and might be used as a variety in drought prone area of Nepal.