Assessment of Some Physiological and Biochemical Traits for Selection of Tolerant Barley Genotypes (Hordeum vulgare L.) in Rainfall Conditions

Abstract

Background: in this study we aim to evaluate some physiological and biochemical important traits for the selection of tolerant Barley genotypes in the rainfall conditions. Methods: This experiment was conducted during the cropping season (2020-2021) at the experimental field of ITGC, Setif, Algeria. Ten genotypes of barley were used in this study to evaluate their performances with Chlorophyll contents, relative water contents, drought sensitivity index, proline content, total soluble sugar content, thousand kernels weight and grain yield. The seeds were sown using an experimental drill in 1.2 m x 5 m plots consisting of 6 rows with a 20 cm row space and the seeding rate is about 250 seeds per m2. Result: Analysis of variance showed that genotype effect was significatif to very high significatif with all studied parameters, the origin of the genotypes tested was only influenced the drought sensitivity index while the row type had a significatif effect on drought sensitivity index and proline contents grain yield was positively correlated with relative water contents however, thousand kernels weight was negatively correlated with relative water contents and Total soluble sugar content. Principal components analysis showed that PC1 was a physio-biochemical axis and the genotypes related to this axis had high values of these traits, while PC2 was a yield and drought tolerance axis and their related genotypes were the most yielding genotypes.