Inheritance of seedling traits under drought stress conditions in bread wheat

Drought stress particularly at seedling stage is a major determinant of wheat production in many parts of the world. This study was conducted with a view to assess the sensitivity of inheritance of seedling traits associated with drought tolerance in wheat. The salient features of the current study were the larger expression of dominance, over-dominance and/or epistatic gene interactions under normal conditions for all the characters except of germination percentage. But under drought stress conditions, there was considerable reduction in these interactions. Seed vigour index (SVI) and shoot length were the most sensitive to drought stress followed by root length and coleoptile length on the basis inconsistence of their degree of dominance under both environments. The germination percentage and root-shoot length ratio appeared to be comparatively stable characters over the environmental differences. Additivity with evidence of some epistatic effects influenced the inheritance of the important characters, viz., cell membrane stability, root length, coleoptile length, and germination percentage and seed vigour index under drought stress conditions.