Capturing agro-morphological variability for tolerance to terminal heat and combined heat-drought stress in landraces and elite cultivar collection of wheat

Shubham Kumar; Hitesh Kumar; Vikas Gupta; Adesh Kumar; Chandra Mohan Singh; Mukul Kumar; Ajay Kumar Singh; Gurusharan Singh Panwar; Sujit Kumar; Akhilesh Kumar Singh; Rahul Kumar

doi:10.3389/fpls.2023.1136455

Capturing agro-morphological variability for tolerance to terminal heat and combined heat-drought stress in landraces and elite cultivar collection of wheat

Front Plant Sci. 2023 May 9:14:1136455. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2023.1136455. eCollection 2023.

Affiliations

¹ Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, Banda University of Agriculture and Technology, Banda, India.
² Crop Improvement Division, Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR)-Indian Institute of Wheat and Barley Research, Karnal, India.
³ Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Jhansi, Banda University of Agriculture and Technology, Banda, India.
⁴ Uttar Pradesh (UP) Council of Agricultural Research, Lucknow, India.
⁵ Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, United States.

Abstract

Climate change has resulted in extreme temperature and drought around the globe, which poses serious threat to food security. Both heat and drought stress affects the production and productivity of wheat crop. The present study was undertaken to evaluate 34 landraces and elite cultivars of Triticum spp. for phenological and yield-related traits under optimum, heat, and combined heat-drought stress environments during 2020-2021 and 2021-2022. The pooled analysis of variance showed significant genotype × environment interaction, suggesting an influence of stress on trait expression. The trait performance of genotypes exhibited significant reduction under combined heat-drought stress as compared to optimum and heat stress environments. The maximum seed yield penalty was observed under combined heat-drought stress environment as compared to heat stress alone. Regression analysis indicated significant contribution of number of grains per spike towards stress tolerance. Based on Stress Tolerance Index (STI), genotypes Local-17, PDW 274, HI-8802, and HI-8713 were identified to be tolerant to both heat and combined heat and drought stress at Banda, whereas genotypes DBW 187, HI-8777, Raj 4120, and PDW 274 were tolerant at Jhansi location. The genotype PDW 274 showed stress tolerance under all treatments at both the locations. The genotypes PDW 233 and PDW 291 showed highest stress susceptibility index (SSI) across the environments. The number of grains per spike and test kernel weight were positively associated with seed yield across the environments and locations. The selected genotypes Local-17, HI 8802, and PDW 274 were identified to be the potential sources of heat and combined heat-drought tolerance, which may be utilized in hybridization to develop tolerant wheat genotypes and also for mapping of underlying genes/quantitative trait loci (QTLs).

Keywords: drought stress; elite cultivars; landraces; terminal heat stress; wheat.