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  • ThesisItemOpen Access
    Physiological indices of drought tolerance in barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) genotypes
    (CCSHAU, 2017) Rajkumar; Sharma, K.D.
    To study the effect of irrigation levels on barley (Hordeum vulgare L.), twenty barley genotypes were evaluated under normal (Two irrigations at tillering and anthesis each) and restricted irrigation conditions (one irrigation at tillering) in concrete drought plots during the 2014-15 and 2015- 16 at the Crop physiology field area, Chaudhary Charan Singh Haryana Agriculture University, Hisar. The experiments were laid out using RBD with three replications. The results from combined analysis of variance in both normal and restricted irrigation conditions indicated that there were significant differences among genotypes with regard to all the traits because of high variation among the genotypes. Drought stress decreased the phenological traits like days to flag leaf, days to heading, days to anthesis and days to physiological maturity. The significant reduction was observed in plant height, dry biomass, leaf area, LAI, LAD, SLA and CGR under restricted irrigation. Under restricted irrigation leaf water potential, osmotic potential, relative water content, CTD, chlorophyll stability, membrane stability, photosynthetic rate, transpiration rate, stomatal conductance and Fv/Fm also decreased in barley genotypes. On the other hand, there was an increase in free proline content, MDA content and enhancement of antioxidant defense system to scavenge excess ROS molecules to prevent cell from damage. The main antioxidant enzymes which showed altered activity were superoxide dismutase catalase, peroxidase and ascorbate peroxidise. Yield and its attributes were also reduced under restricted irrigation condition. The quality parameters i.e. protein content, husk content and malt yield were increased while β-Glucan content decreased under restricted irrigation. Finally, based on physiobiochemical traits, it was revealed that among the tested genotypes, BH 14-05 and BH 10-30 performed better in terms of physiological, biochemical and yield related traits under restricted irrigation condition. These results indicated that selecting more tolerant genotypes based on physiological traits was the way to overcome terminal water stress and can be used for further crop improvement programmes.