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PRINT ISSN : 2319-7692
Online ISSN : 2319-7706 Issues : 12 per year Publisher : Excellent Publishers Email : editorijcmas@gmail.com / submit@ijcmas.com Editor-in-chief: Dr.M.Prakash Index Copernicus ICV 2018: 95.39 NAAS RATING 2020: 5.38 |
Drought stress at flowering stage in upland rice is most damaging cause of yield reduction. Impact of drought stress at flowering stage on morphological, physiological and biochemical traits, yield and yield components are less understood. Present experiment was executed in pots under glass house conditions by taking six upland rice varieties namely Bagri, Nankawa, Bakaiya, N-22, Ashoka-228 and NDR-97. Drought stress at (80 KPa±2 SMT) was imposed by withholding irrigation at 50% flowering stage. We observed drought stress significantly affects all investigated traits. Plants having lower plant height, higher reduction in leaf area, higher root volume and root/shoot ratio under drought was well adapted to drought. Higher leaves chlorophyll content and lesser reduction under drought, increased accumulation of soluble sugar in culm, leaf sheath and leaf blade and more reduction in starch content were linked with better drought resistance in upland rice. Higher proline content in leaves, higher biomass, higher panicle number, higher percent fertile spikelets were the traits associated with higher grain yield under drought stress. Among all studied varieties N-22 exhibited the above desired traits at flowering stage drought resistance may be considered as drought resistant. NDR-97 and Ashoka-228 were moderately resistant, while Bagri was found most sensitive among all. It is concluded from the present experiment that N-22 can be used as parent donor in upland rice breeding programme and the investigated traits can be used as selection criterion.