Genotypic Performance and Selection Criteria for Enhancing Drought Tolerance in Hexaploid Wheat

Abstract

Wheat is a staple food in many developing countries like Pakistan with a passage of time population of Pakistan increase therefore, it creates food security issues, to overcome on these types of issues, it is necessary to develop such verities of wheat that have potential to meet challenges environmental changes like water scarcity etc. An experiment was conducted to investigate the response of 50 wheat genotypes at maturity stage under drought conditions having three environments (Normal and Drought D1, D2) by using Randomized Completely Block Design (RCBD). The ANOVA showed highly significant differences among the genotypes in all traits under studied. The genotypic and phenotypic correlation showed positive correlation under normal and both drought condition except peduncle length both in normal and drought (D1, D2) conditions. The genotypes G-5(AZRC-1), G-17 (Faisalabad 2008), G-12 (Inqilab), G-26 (Khirman), and G-31(Hashim-8) showed tolerance against drought in current experiment. Selection based on these characteristics and improved the performance of other characters. Because of these findings, selection based on these qualities is not appropriate for drought tolerance. The best performing germplasm under drought stress can be a desirable genotype for future breeding programs and early selection criteria for generating high yielding, according to the findings.