IDENTIFYING TOLERANCE OF SOME WHEAT GENOTYPES TO WATER STRESS CONDITIONS

Abstract

Water stress is one of the most deleterious abiotic stress influencing wheat performance and its productivity. So, a field experiment was executed during two successive winter seasons of 2018/2019 and 2019/2020 aiming to assess the response of six wheat genotypes i.e., Misr 1, Sakha 95, Giza 171, Shandaweel 1, Misr 2 and Gemmiza 9 to three water stress i.e., control, skipping one irrigation (the third irrigation) and skipping two irrigation (the fourth and fifth irrigation). The performance at 70 days from sowing expressed in chlorophyll (a &b) and proline content was evaluated as well as wheat yield and its components and water relations were measured. The findings showed that the effect of water stress treatments on all studied parameters were significant, where all aforementioned traits significantly decreased with raising water stress conditions except proline content which took a reverse trend due to the behavior of wheat plants under water stress. On the other hand, the best wheat genotype regarding water stress tolerance was Sakha 95, while the lowest wheat genotype regarding water stress tolerance was Shandaweel 1. Regarding, the water productivity, it decreased with the increase of irrigation water applied.
 Generally, it can be concluded that Sakha 95 is the proper wheat genotype to be cultivated when we expect deficiency in irrigation water and maybe at similar locations as well.