Assessment of traits for grain yield under drought in finger millet

Climate change models predict that drought stress (DS) would continue as a major abiotic limitation for food production. For DS conditions, finger millet would be a better option as compared to other cereal crops because of its drought resilience. However the yield improvement of finger millet through yield per se selection has reached a plateau. Hence, trait based breeding approach in addition to yield per se would help in further yield enhancement. For which, identification of traits those tolerate DS from among stable released varieties would be more appropriate. Imposing DS for 36 days from earhead emergence to grain filling under field condition in 16 released varieties, reduced the grain yield by 36.6% with decreased physiological and yield contributing traits. Considering the per cent reduction of a given parameter due to DS, path analysis and backward step wise regression analysis, the leaf temperature (LT) was found the most important physiological trait under DS. Among the agronomic traits, productive tillers, mean ear size and threshing percentage equally and positively contributed towards the grain yield under DS. Finger width had an additional contribution towards grain yield under DS condition. Our results also reports, that Cv. PR-202 is relatively drought tolerant and; Cv. ML-365 performed similar to that of popularly cultivated Cv.GPU-28.