EVALUATION OF BREAD AND EINKORN WHEAT UNDER IN VITRO DROUGHT STRESS

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the resistance of bread and einkorn wheat genotypes under in vitro conditions against drought stress during germination. Twelve bread and ten einkorn wheat genotypes were used as plant material and seven drought stress levels were applied based on a three-replicate factorial restricted randomized block design in order to investigate their effects on germination rate (GR), germinating power (GP), coleoptile length (CL), shoot length (SL), root length (RL), shoot root length ratio (SRLR), root fresh weight (RFW), root dry weight (RDW), and root fresh dry weight ratio (RFDWR) during the year 2014-2015. PEG - 6000 was used to evaluate the effect of drought stress under in vitro conditions on the wheat genotypes. The values of all traits were decreased by the increased effect of PEG levels (p = 0.05). The results of the variance analysis showed that the genotypes had significant statistical differences for the examined traits under drought stress (p < 0.05). According to the results of the GGE biplot analysis, of the total variation between the genotypes and traits investigated under drought stress (75.97%), PC1and PC2 represented 51.51% and 24.47%, respectively. In addition, einkorn wheat populations were located in the sector of GR, GP, and SRL, which means that these populations had a greater performance for these traits under drought stress conditions. Bread wheat and einkorn genotypes behaved differently for the traits under drought stress. It is considered that the results of the field and in vivo experiments for cold and drought stress will contribute to producing reliable suggestions.