Abstract
Food security continues to be affected by global climatic changes which include increase of drought stress. A sustainable solution is to develop crop cultivars that are tolerant to climatic stresses. Among all crops cassava has a high potential to mitigate hunger. A field experiment was conducted to evaluate the performance of 79 cassava (Manihot esculenta) varieties under drought stress. The parameters evaluated were fresh storage root weight (SRFW), number of storage roots (NSR), above ground weight (AGW), plant height (PH), harvest index (HI) and leaf retention (LR). Results showed significant variations among varieties for most traits. Under stressed treatment, positive correlation was expressed between SRFW and NSR (0.373**), AGW (0.301**) and HI (0.560**). The HI and AGW expressed negative significant correlations-0.398**. Under non-stressed treatment, SRFW had a positive and significant with all the traits NSR (0.434**), AGW (0.377**), PH (0.102*), HI (0.437**) and LR (0.184**). There was negative significant correlations between HI and AGW (-0.482**). SRFW was used as a primary trait to select best performing genotypes. Most of the drought tolerant varieties expressed higher HI, NSR and AGW; hence, termed as target traits in selecting drought tolerance in cassava Key words: Phenotype, cassava (Manihot esculenta), drought stress, traits, Kiboko.
Highlights
Global climatic changes like increase in frequency and intensity of drought affect agriculture and food security at large
Significant (p
Under water stress treatment (Table 1) the highest SRFW was obtained from LML/2008/363 (26kg) with 110 (07/0621HS) (1.85 kg) giving the least
Summary
Global climatic changes like increase in frequency and intensity of drought affect agriculture and food security at large. Among the effects of climate change, drought is the most frequent factor (Athar and Ashraf, 2009). Drought’s effect hinders crop production with estimates indicating that drought independently contributes up to 17% yield loss of the major crops when compared with other abiotic stresses (Athar and Ashraf, 2009). The rates of yield reduction for major crops such as barley, rice, sorghum, maize and wheat will increase by more than 50% in 2050 and almost 90% in 2100 if sufficient adaptation measures are not implemented (Athar and Ashraf, 2009). A necessary and sustainable solution is to develop crop cultivars that can tolerate these climatic stresses to be able to feed the growing population (El-Sharkawy, 2007). Cassava serves as a greater part of the diet for almost a billion people in approximately 105 countries and Africa is the largest producer with 118 million tons (FAO, 2018)
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