Evaluation of groundnut genotypes for late season drought tolerance

Fifty genotypes of groundnut including released varieties and advanced breeding lines were used to assess the drought tolerance. These genotypes were evaluated both in managed drought stress (DS) and non stress (NS) situations during post rainy season (Jan- April), 2011 at Oilseeds Farm, Tamil Nadu Agricultural :University, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India. The drought stress was imposed by withholding irrigation after 60 days after sowing for the drought stress trial. Observations were recorded for pod yield per plant and kernel yield per plant on randomly chosen five plants per entry per replication. The data were subjected to ANOVA and drought tolerance parameter viz., drought susceptibility index (DSI) for pod yield per plant and kernel yield per plant. The results indicated that genotypes differed significantly for pod and kernel yield per plant. Among the genotypes, 7 and 6 genotypes were observed as highly drought tolerant based on pod and kernel yield per plant respectively. A total of 6 and 9 genotypes recorded as highly susceptible to drought for pod and kernel yield per plant respectively. Among these genotypes, each three drought tolerant (ICGV 91114, K1375 and ICGV 02125) and drought susceptible (ICGV 01279, ICGV 98170 and ICGV 98175) genotypes were selected for hybridization programme to develop mapping populations.