JIA-2019-11

Journal of Integrative Agriculture 2019, 18(11): 2483–2491 RESEARCH ARTICLE Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect Early selection of bread wheat genotypes using morphological and photosynthetic attributes conferring drought tolerance Hafiz Ghulam Muhu-Din Ahmed 1 , Abdus Salam khan 1 , LI Ming-ju 2 , Sultan Habibullah Khan 3 , Muhammad Kashif 1 1 Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, University of Agriculture Faisalabad, Faisalabad 38000, Pakistan 2 Institute of Agricultural Environment and Resources, Yunnan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Kunming 650205, P.R.China 3 Center of Agricultural Biotechnology and Biochemistry, University of Agriculture Faisalabad, Faisalabad 38000, Pakistan Abstract Genetic diversity is the base of any genetic improvement breeding program aimed at stress breeding. The variability among breeding materials is of primary importance in the achievements of a good crop production. Herein, 105 wheat genotypes were screened against drought stress using factorial completely randomized design at seedling stage to determine the genetic diversity and traits association conferring drought tolerance. Analysis of variances revealed that all the studied parameters differed significantly among all genotypes, indicating the significance genetic variability existed among all genotypes for studied indices. The 10 best performance genotypes G1, G6, G11, G16, G21, G26, G39, G44, G51, and G61 were screened as drought tolerant, while five lowest performance genotypes G3, G77, G91, G98, and G105 were screened as drought susceptible. Root length, chlorophyll a , chlorophyll b , and carotenoid contents were significantly correlated among themselves which exhibited the importance of these indices for rainfed areas in future wheat breeding scheme. Shoot length exhibited non-significant and negative association with other studied traits, and its selection seems not to be a promising criteria for this germplasm for drought stress. Best performance genotypes under drought stress conditions will be useful in future wheat breeding program and early selection will be effective for developing high yielding and drought tolerant wheat varieties. Keywords: drought, photosynthesis, chlorophyll, wheat, seedling, carotenoid 1. Introduction Crop productivity faced with many challenges, one of the major challenge is drought, which is primarily due to alterations in precipitation pattern and short rain fall (Toker et al . 2007). For breeding water deficit tolerance, it is very important to first know the mechanism and behavior of plant under drought environments. Many reasons contribute concerning the complexity of drought tolerance mechanism like, crop species, intensity, period of stress, and plant growth stage (Mir et al . 2012). Survival of plant under drought can Received 2 March, 2018 Accepted 25 July, 2018 Correspondence Hafiz Ghulam Muhu-Din Ahmed, E-mail: ahmedbreeder@gmail.com ; LI Ming-ju, E-mail: lily69618@163. com © 2019 CAAS. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) . doi: 10.1016/S2095-3119(18)62083-0