IDENTIFICATION OF DROUGHT TOLERANT GENOTYPE THROUGH MORPHO-PHYSIOLOGICAL AND MOLECULAR SCREENING IN BARLEY (Hordeum vulgare L.)

Drought causes enormous yield losses in barley. The experiment was conducted to finddrought tolerant genotypes from 123 diverse European barley genotypes (Hordeum vulgareL.) at the Experimental Farm and in the laboratory of the Department of Genetics and PlantBreeding, Hajee Mohammad Danesh Science and Technology University (HSTU), Dinajpur,Bangladesh during Rabi season, 2021-22 following strip plot design with two treatments viz.control and rainfed drought and with two replications. The analysis of variance showed thatall morpho-physiological variables analyzed in both control and drought-stressedenvironments showed a wide range of genotype variation. The genotypic coefficient ofvariation was lower than the phenotypic coefficient of variance. High heritability coupledwith high genetic advance as a percent of the mean was observed on the number of grains perspike and yield per plant (168.41% and 186.98%, respectively). Maximum values for yieldper plant were revealed for the genotype EEB450 (35.22g) followed by EEB401 (35.11g),and EEB336 (31.05g) in the control condition and EEB114 (27.78g) followed EEB318(24.95g) for drought-stressed condition. A significant positive correlation between yield perplant and row type, and the number of grain per spike was observed in both control anddrought conditions. The EEB81, EEB382, EEB90, EEB83, EEB116, EEB418, EEB298,EEB265, EEB318, EEB114, EEB204, EEB152, EEB433, EEB166, EEB129, EEB254,EEB346 were identified as highly drought tolerant cultivars based upon drought susceptibleindex (DSI). A total ten simple sequence markers viz. BMAC0577, BMAG808, WMS6,EBMAC624, Bmag125, Bmag006, Scssr25691, Bmac0113, GMS027, Bmag337 wereevaluated in 39 barley cultivars for molecular characterization. All of the SSRs werepolymorphic across the 39 genotypes. A total of 31 alleles were detected and the number ofalleles per marker ranged from 2 to 4 with an average of 3.1 alleles per locus. The mostpolymorphic microsatellite markers were BMAG808, EBMAC624 and Bmag006 detecting 4alleles, followed by Scssr25691, Bmac0113, GMS027, Bmag337 and BMAC0577 with 3alleles. The highest PIC value (0.7) was recorded for BMAG808 and GMS027, Bmag337 andBmac0113 both recorded second highest (0.65) and lowest by WMS6 (0.42). In populationgenetic structure analysis, population I consisted 19 genotypes, Population II comprised oftotal 15 genotypes, and Population III comprised of total 5 genotypes. The results obtainedfrom the above two experiments suggest that the genotypes EEB 450, EEB 336, and EEB129 should be considered as potential source of genetic materials and must be taken distinctlyfurther drought stress breeding programs in barley.