A Diallel Analysis of Drought Tolerance Indices at Seedling Stage in Bread Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)

Drought is one of the most important abiotic factors affecting wheat production and development of tolerant genotypes is limited by the lack of effective selection criteria. A genetic analysis of drought tolerance indices at seedling stage (i.e. root length, shoot length, root/shoot ratio and seedling dry weight) was performed for a seven-parent half diallel cross of bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) in Egypt. The parents and their F2 progenies were evaluated in the laboratory under osmotic stress induced by polyethylene glycol (PEG) with five treatments (i.e. 0, 5, 10, 15 and 20% PEG-6000). Grain yield per spike was also evaluated under drought stressed field conditions. The parent P7 had maximum root and shoot lengths under stress conditions, highest root/shoot ratio under 20% PEG and higher grain yield per spike than the other parents suggesting that P7 possessed stress tolerance genes. Grain yield/spike was significantly correlated with root length (r= 0.41, P<0.05) and seedling dry weight (r= 0.46, P<0.05) at 15% PEG. Both additive and non-additive gene effects were involved in the genetic control of all traits. Rather low to moderately narrow-sense heritability was obtained for root length (0.18 and 0.12) and shoot length (0.19 and 0.12) at 15 and 20% PEG, respectively; root/shoot ratio (0.15) and seedling dry weight (0.16) at 15% PEG. Moderate genetic advance was observed for root length (41.24%) and shoot length (29.96%) under stress conditions suggesting that selection could be practiced on both traits for improving drought tolerance in wheat breeding programs.