EVALUATION OF MAIZE ACCESSIONS FOR DROUGHT TOLERANCE THROUGH PRINCIPAL COMPONENT ANALYSIS

Drought is among the severe abiotic stresses that reduces crop yield. It greatly affects the growth and development at both vegetative and reproductive stages and the yield processes of crops. Maize is the third most important and widely distributed crop, suffering from drought stress, resulting in final kernel yield losses. The conduct of a screening experiment selected drought-sensitive and droughttolerant maize accessions against water stress applied via calculating field capacity. This experiment used two treatments, T0 and T1 (T0 with 100% field capacity and T1 with 50% field capacity), in a completely randomized design (CRD) with a factorial arrangement and two replications at the wirehouse, Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan. Recording data on seedling traits ensued. Drought-tolerant and drought-sensitive accessions' selection resulted from principal component analysis, with a conclusion that the accessions H45C x H6B, H21 x H2B, H17 x H16, H23 x H21, H17 x H16A were drought tolerant, while H20 x H7C, H47A x H6C, and H9 x H21 were drought sensitive. This research will provide information in the future for comparing drought-sensitive and drought-tolerant accessions and help identify drought-tolerant maize accessions benefitting future breeding programs.