Abstract
Breeding drought tolerance in groundnuts cultivars would reduce yield losses due to drought stress in rain-fed growing areas. The mode of gene action governing the inheritance of drought tolerance and secondary traits was investigated by mating 30 lines according to North Carolina design II scheme. The parents and resulting 75 F2 progenies were grown in a split plot arrangement using an alpha lattice design, with two replications under drought and non-stressed environments for two seasons. The trials were conducted over two seasons, in 2017 A and 2017 B at the National Semi-Arid Resources Research Institute, located 27 km west of Soroti town in eastern Uganda. The results showed highly significant differences between families and parents for drought tolerance and agronomic traits. Traits including BIO, DTI(PY), DTI (BIO) and HI had the highest correlations with PY. HI was positively associated with no. of pods per plant under drought stressed and non-stressed environments. Under drought stressed environment, GCA was more important than SCA for traits such as SCMR2, and HI. However, SCA was more important than GCA for traits such as SCMR2, PY, BIO, DTI(PY), and DTI (BIO). The study identified parents with best GCA and combinations with best SCA effects for both agronomic and drought tolerance traits. The new population is shown to be a valuable genetic resource for variety selection and improvement of groundnut for adaptation to the drought prone areas of Uganda.
Published Version
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call