Effects of Drought Stress on Some Agronomic and Morpho-Physiological Traits in Durum Wheat Genotypes

Durum wheat performance in the Mediterranean climate is limited when water scarcity occurs before and during anthesis. The present research was performed to determine the effect of drought stress on several physiological and agro-morphological traits in 17 durum wheat genotypes under two conditions (control and drought) over two years. The results of analysis of variance indicated that the various durum wheat genotypes responded differently to drought stress. Drought stress significantly reduced the grain filling period, plant height, peduncle length, number of spikes per plot, number of grains per spike, thousand grains weight, grain yield, biomass, and harvest index in all genotypes compared to the control condition. The heatmap-based correlation analysis indicated that grain yield was positively and significantly associated with phenological characters (days to heading, days to physiological maturity, and grain filling period), as well as number of spikes per plant, biomass, and harvest index under drought conditions. The yield-based drought and susceptible indices revealed that stress tolerance index (STI), geometric mean productivity (GMP), mean productivity (MP), and harmonic mean (HM) were positively and significantly correlated with grain yields in both conditions. Based on the average of the sum of ranks across all indices and a three-dimensional plot, two genotypes (G9 and G12) along with the control variety (G1) were identified as the most tolerant genotypes. Among the investigated genotypes, the new breeding genotype G12 showed a high drought tolerance and yield performance under both conditions. Hence, this genotype can be a candidate for further multi-years and locations test as recommended for cultivation under rainfed conditions in arid and semi-arid regions.