EVALUATION OF SPRING WHEAT GENOTYPES UNDER WATER STRESSED CONDITION

Pakistan faces severe challenges in wheat production annually due to the devastating effects of drought stress. Therefore, present research was carried out to evaluate 15 exotic bread wheat genotypes along with the local check variety, Khirman for their performance under drought stress. Analysis of variance revealed that all the traits were significantly different (P<0.01) among the cultivars. Based on mean performance, genotype V-18 showed better performance for all the studied characters, while genotype V-14 showed desirable performance for different traits such as early growth vigor, number of grains spikelet-1, number of grains spike-1, number of spikelets spike-1, spike length, peduncle length, and grain yield plant-1. The local check Khirman also produced desirable values for four different traits, namely early growth vigor, number of grains spike-1, peduncle length, and grain yield plant-1. The cluster analysis divided all the genotypes into three distinct clades. The first cluster comprises V-14, V-18, and the local check Khirman, which performed very well under drought conditions compared to the other genotypes. The presence of these genotypes with the local check Khirman is regarded as indicative of drought-tolerant genotypes. The second cluster comprises nine genotypes, namely V-10, V-11, V-12, V-13, V-16, V-19, V-20, and V-23, which performed moderately compared to the genotypes found in the drought-tolerant cluster. The last cluster comprises four genotypes, namely V-09, V-15, V-17, and V-22, which performed very poorly under drought conditions. Overall, the two exotic lines, V-14 and V-18, which were in the cluster with the drought-tolerant variety Khirman, performed very well and can be considered as drought-tolerant genotypes