Abiotic stresses like drought frequently reduce the productivity of wheat, an important global cereal crop farmed for food, feed and raw materials. Therefore, attempt should be made to search for drought tolerance in wheat cultivars. The purpose of the study was to look into how morphological features thirty wheat genotypes were affected by PEG-induced physiological drought stress at germination and seedling stages. Seven morphological traits viz germination percentage, root number, shoot length, shoot fresh weight, root fresh weight, shoot dry weight, root dry weight was measured at 14 days of stress condition and significant variation was observed in most of the traits due to genotypes, treatments, and genotype × treatment interaction. Drought stress causes a significant decrease in almost all morphological traits during the germination and early seedling stages, and among the genotypes SA-2 and SA-3 were performed best. A positive significant correlation was found among the morphological traits, except for fresh and dry weight of shoot. Principle Component Analysis (PCA) showed that only first two PCs were significant and had eigenvalues > 1. The first two PCs cover the 72.78% of total variation. Multi Trait Stability Index (MTSI) showed that SA-3, SA-2, BL-1020 and PV-79 performed well in drought stress condition and these genotypes can be further used for breeding program to develop drought tolerant high yielding wheat variety.
Key words: Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.), drought stress, PEG, tolerance, MTSI (Multi trait stability index)
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