Anthesis and Booting: Two Critical Stages Vulnerable to Water Stress in Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) With Respect to Yield Production

Six spring bread wheat varieties (AAS-11, BARS-09, Dharabi-11, Faisalabad-08, Chakwal-50 and Fatehjang-2016) and 4 elite lines of wheat (10FJ01, 12FJ26, 12FJ01 and 11FJS309) were analyzed with respect to water stress by providing them two types of treatments i.e., control (no stress) and strained treatment (20 days of stoppage of irrigation at booting and further 20 days of drought after anthesis) at Barani Agricultural Research Station, Fatehjang during 2017-18. Results of this study exhibited highly significant variations prevailed in all the wheat genotypes by viewing their mean performance with respect of all physiological and yield traits. AAS-11, Fatehjang-2016 and Dharabi-11 exhibited their best performance and pointed out elevated mean productivity (MP), stress tolerance index (STI), relative water content (RWC) and geometric mean productivity (GMP). Moreover, stress susceptibility index (SSI) and tolerance (TOL) was anticipated at lowest among the above-mentioned wheat varieties and lines. Based multivariate analysis (biplot) and dendrogram studies; AAS-11, Fatehjang-2016 and Dharabi-11 are most suitable wheat cultivars for drought tolerance at booting and anthesis stage. MP, STI, RWC, GMP, SSI and TOL are renowned to be favourable gauges for identification of drought tolerance wheat ideotype. Likewise, same wheat varieties also exhibited higher grain yield per plant that put them in higher ranked genotypes for making selections and recombination while improving wheat through breeding for drought resistant.