The genotypic and phenotypic responses and feature’s associations of triticale genotypes to drought stress

Abstract

In order to reflect the effect of water deficit on triticale and the probability of screening some suitable genotypes tolerant to the drought stress, a study on nine triticale genotypes under four irrigation regimes in two years was carried out. The irrigation regimes were containing control irrigation, and withholding irrigation at three stages: flowering, milky seed, and doughy seed. Different features including plant height, leaf angle, leaf weigh, total dry mater, spike length, spike weight, spike number, grain number, straw yield, harvest index, and grain yield were measured for all applied genotypes in this study. the results showed that lower number of irrigation and earlier withholding the water from the triticale plants can lead to a high decrease in productivity of triticale genotypes. Consequently, irrigation treatments and water availability are a significant factor for determining the type of breeding programs. Also, some genotypes showed a high potential for being considered for releasing cultivars. Under normal irrigation ET-83-20 and under severe water deficit ET-85-04 showed better performance than other genotypes. Estimation of genotypic features such as heritability and coefficient of variation showed that there is a high possibility and potential of producing cultivars with high productivity under either normal or stressed conditions. Additionally, high heritability and significant association with grain yield for some features such spike weight, spike number, and grain number suggest that they are suitable feature for indirect screening and selection criteria.