Drought is a common abiotic stress in tropical and subtropical regions that limits the growth and development of agricultural crops, mainly impacting grain yield. Acting through plant breeding is the most viable alternative for obtaining genotypes more tolerant of environments with stress. This work aims to select popcorn genotypes for environments with drought and to identify discriminating traits for the evaluation of drought tolerance in popcorn germplasm. Fifteen Latin American populations of popcorn were evaluated in water stress (WS) and well-watered (WW) conditions. The evaluated traits were based in morpho-agronomic, physiological and radicular descriptors. Data were submitted to individual and joint ANOVA and GT Biplot analysis. Variability was detected between populations for all traits in both conditions. The drought caused a reduction of 30.61% and 3.5% in grain yield and popping expansion, respectively. Based in GT biplot analysis, 880POP was the most stable in WS and WW, being indicated as a promising population for cultivation in environments with water limitation. This study is going to allow the establishment of a collection of great importance to maize germplasm and to provide information to facilitate the process of selection in breeding programs focused on drought tolerance.
Keywords: drought; genetic resources; gt biplot; multivariate analysis; water stress.