Abstract
BackgroundWater deficit stress is considered as one of the most important environmental stresses which is more harmful to strategic crops, as it reduces the final crop yield by up to 40%. Therefore, the aim of this research is to evaluate some promising and superior sorghum entries for water stress tolerance and determine the most agro-morphological parameters and reasons responsible for drought tolerance in this regard.ResultsFifteenth sorghum genotypes (five parents and their ten F1 crosses resulting from half diallel analysis) were used in this investigation under two levels of irrigation (normal and drought experiment). The recent genotypes were estimated through some physiological parameters related to water stress tolerance in sorghum; besides that, eight inter-simple sequence repeat (ISSR) primers were used to identify among the five sorghum parents and the highest five crosses resistance to water deficit conditions depending on the data calculated from all studied traits under both conditions. The following genotypes P1, P2, P3, P1 × P2, P1 × P3, P2 × P3, P2 × P4, and P3 × P4 confirmed high resistance to water deficit conditions under the drought treatment compared with the control. This high resistance was affirmed through the calculated data for all studied traits. The ISSR profile analysis showed 151 fragments as taxonomic divisions among the ten sorghum genotypes (38 of them were monomorphic and 113 polymorphic with 74.83% polymorphism).ConclusionThe entries (P1, P2, P3, P1 × P2, P1 × P3, P2 × P3, P2 × P4, and P3 × P4) were succeeded in achieving the highest concept of water deficit resistance under both conditions. Therefore, this work will be the nucleus for producing resistant sorghum varieties for drought stress in the future.
Highlights
Water deficit stress is considered as one of the most important environmental stresses which is more harmful to strategic crops, as it reduces the final crop yield by up to 40%
Mean performance After obtaining the results of the mean performance shown in Table 3 for all genotypes tested under normal irrigation and water deficit conditions, it can be summarized that the parent numbers (1, 2, 3), as well as the crosses P1 × P2, P1 × P3, P2 × P3, P2 × P4 and P3 × P4, recorded the highest values of traits: grain yield/plant, root dry weight, and maximum root length related to reach the water stored in the deep layers of soil during the occurrence of water stress; in addition, they increased the number of roots/plant, especially the adventitious or epigenetic roots form root system which can protect plant life during water stress
Based on half diallel analysis, it must be recognized that the GCA effects have given the opportunity to additive gene action and its various interactions to express the success of the five sorghum accessions used in this investigation, especially the first three lines compatible with each other and giving a group of excellent crosses for water stress tolerance compared to these traits studied, especially grain yield/plant, maximum root length, number of roots/plant, root dry weight, and proline and chlorophyll contents and the rest of the traits in this regard
Summary
Water deficit stress is considered as one of the most important environmental stresses which is more harmful to strategic crops, as it reduces the final crop yield by up to 40%. Twenty-one cross and one standard check variety of maize were estimated under normal and water deficit conditions to study the impact of drought stress on these entries through determining standard heterosis and general and specific combining ability effects and evaluated genetic diversity for the previous materials using five primers of ISSR, Esmail et al (2016). Khatab et al (2017) evaluated water stress tolerance on some sorghum genotypes through studying some physiological traits under normal and water stress conditions and the results confirmed that some entries such as PI534175, CD550190, and CPI456765 × PI534175 were exhibited highly resistance for drought tolerance for all studied traits under all conditions. The most and biggest values of water stress tolerance indices were estimated by Jabereldar et al (2017) through estimating five sorghum accessions under three levels of water stress, and the final results detected that the highest mean yielding was showed in the sorghum cultivar (Taggat 14) which confirmed high tolerance for drought stress. Kalindee et al (2018) found that sorghum seed bacterialization was considered highly resistance for water deficit conditions through determining proline content in sorghum leaves and this action was in corporeal up to the normal treatment at squeaky water stress condition wherein soil dampness was in the domain of 8 to 20%
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