Evaluation of barley (Hordeumvulgare L.)Pure lines for drought tolerance

Abstract

In Ethiopia, drought is a major problem that causes high yield reduction in barleyproducer regions. Thus, search of drought tolerant barley genotypes is the first and mostcrucial nationwide issue to alleviate the problem sustainably. Hence the current studywas carried out to evaluate and identify drought tolerant pure lines using 16 barleygenotypes under greenhouse conditions using randomized complete block design withtwo irrigation regimes through computation of nine drought tolerance indices. Theanalysis of variance showed highly significant (P<0.01) differences for yield of droughtstress, non-stress conditions and for all drought tolerance indices. Stress tolerance index,geometric mean productivity and mean productivity were the most powerful andeffective predictors identified genotypes under stress and non-stress conditions. Clusterand principal component analyses were classified genotypes according to droughttolerance ability and yield stability. Most of them confirmed that 18294-01, 235243-01,224751-01, 238367-01, 230205-01 and 230207-01 were found drought tolerant and yieldstable pure lines under drought stress and non-stress environments, especially 18294-01and 235243-01 were the superior ones fitted for most of criteria. Therefore barley purelines identified as drought tolerant and yield stable can be recommended to be used inhybridization as parents for improvement of drought tolerant barley varieties inbreeding program. However, further investigation and identification of desirable purelines at field level by the aid of marker assisting selection canbe recommended to betaken into consideration.