• Adil Altaf

• Sadia Gull

• Xinkai Zhu

• Min Zhu

• Ghulam Rasool

• Muhi Eldeen Hussien Ibrahim

• Muhammad Aleem

• Saleem Uddin

• Aamir Saeed

• Amir Zaman Shah

• Ahmad Zada

• Ma Quan

• Ding Yonggang

• Dongyi Xu

• Li Chen

Abstract

Drought drastically affects plant growth and development, and thus reduces crop productivity. Drought stress tolerance in wheat is a prime factor for stabilization of crop performance in the drought-prone environments. It is not a simple response but mostly conditioned by many components’ responses, which interacts and may differ for crops, concerning types, intensity and duration of water deficiency. Moreover, most agronomical characters inherit differently in normal and stress conditions and are known to be affected by environmental factors. Therefore, selection based on the phenotype is difficult for such traits. Wheat (Triticum Aestivum L.) occupies 220 million hectares i.e., 17% of the total cultivated land in the world and supports nearly 35% of the world’s population. The main objective of this study was to observe the response of 40 wheat cultivars to drought tolerance by evaluation through polyethylene glycol (PEG) mediated moisture stress under laboratory conditions. Seedling traits studied in two different concentrations of PEG (20% & 30%). The result showed that with increasing PEG concentration the seedling traits decreased and at 30% of PEG, no germination observed. Physiological parameter such as relative water content (RWC) was very responsive to drought stress and has been shown associated well with drought tolerance. Under osmotic stress, maximum relative water contents observed in Inqilab-91, Chakwal-50 and LLR-17. Furthermore, under stress condition amount of proline content increased significantly in all wheat cultivars in comparison to control. Based on root/shoot/coleoptile length, dry root/shoot weight and proline contents Chakwal-97, Inqilab-91, Pak-81, Faisalabad-08 and Fareed-06 found drought-tolerant cultivars

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