Muhammad Omer Farooq * and Muhammad Kashif
Department of Plant Breeding and Genetic, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan
*Corresponding author: momerfarooq327@gmail.com
Drought stress causes a considerable decrease in wheat yield, especially in developing countries like Pakistan. In the current study, seedling traits, i.e., root length, shoot length, shoot fresh weight, shoot dry weight, and selected root to shoot (length) ratio to find their effectiveness in evaluating drought tolerance of wheat genotypes. Different genotypes showed different responses under normal, and drought conditions as mean squares for genotypes were significant. When plants are exposed to stress, they try to overcome the stress by adopting different strategies like extending the root system to reach the deep soil water. An increase in stress causes a reduction in both root and shoot length. Genotypes named Faisalabad-08, Sehar-06, 9633, 9507, and Lasani-08 showed maximum and high root length under normal conditions, but their root length decreased significantly (P<0.05) when exposed to a drought environment. Because of their behavior, they have been tagged as drought susceptible genotypes. Genotypes Chakwal-86, Ass-11, Manthar-2003, Miraj 2008, Chakwal-50, 9488, 9805, 9859, 9512, and 9637 showed high values for root length under drought condition and while comparing their performance under both the environments, i.e., normal and drought, their root length decreased non-significantly. So, these genotypes are tagged as drought-tolerant genotypes.