DRY MATTER REMOBILIZATION, YIELD AND YIELD COMPONENTS OF DURUM (TRITICUM DURUM DESF.) AND BREAD (TRITICUM AESTIVUM L.) WHEAT GENOTYPES UNDER DROUGHT STRESS

Drought is a major limiting factor affecting wheat production in the world. We aimed to study the effect of soil water deficit on dry matter remobilization (DMR), grain yield (GY) and yield components of durum and bread wheat genotypes. Drought stress accelerated DMR. Lowest remobilization of dry matter into grains was detected in the tallest, late heading genotypes, which were also characterized by low harvest index (HI). Drought stress showed less affect on plant height (PH), peduncle length (PL), spike length (SL), spike width (SW), spikelet number per spike (SNS) but strongly affected the biological yield (BY), spike mass (SM), grain number per spike (GNS) and grain mass per spike (GMS), thousand kernels mass (TKM). GY positively and significantly correlated with spikes m(-2) (SN), BY and HI under drought stress condition. We consider that wheat characteristics DMR, SN, BY, HI are good selection criteria under drought stress.