Author(s):

NV Soni, HL Dhaduk, CK Desai and JR Patel

Abstract: Knowledge of the mechanisms of stress tolerance, its inheritance and efficient techniques of screening germplasms for moisture stress can facilitate utilization for crop improvement and isolating stress resilient genotypes. The present study aimed to identify the suitable donors for generating moisture stress tolerant genotypes to mitigate the problem in areas affected by water limiting conditions. Nineteen maize inbreds were evaluated under field conditions for normal irrigation and by withholding irrigation at flowering stage in split plot design with three replications during 2013-14. The results revealed that stress conditions leads to increase in days to flower but on other hand it leads to force maturity. Leaf rolling and senescence were higher in stress block as compared to normal irrigation in most of the genotypes. The genotype, CM 140 resulted in shorter anthesis silking interval (4.3 days),least leaf senescence (2.3), least yield penalty (23.3 %) with highest increase in leaf proline content under stress (2.5 fold) followed by IL 111 (4.7 days, 2.4, 23.9 %and 2.3 fold) over normal irrigation, respectively. Overall two genotypes were found to be stress tolerant, four showed moderate response and thirteen revealed susceptible response to stress. Hence, the study indicated that the identified genotypes may be used asgenetic resources for maize improvement programme in future.

Pages: 1393-1397  |  1247 Views  286 Downloads

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