SCREENING OF COTTON GENOTYPES FOR YIELD TRAITS UNDER DIFFERENT IRRIGATION REGIMES

Cotton is a drought sensitive crop, because of less capable water consumer. Nevertheless, cotton has physiological mechanism to adopt semi-arid climate, such as deep penetrating root systems. The leaves and fruit that can shed when plants are stressed under a flexible fruiting period. The experimental trial was conducted at the experimental area of Cotton Section, Agriculture Research Institute Tandojam during 2012. Ten genotypes viz; Hari dost, Sindh-1, Shahbaz-95, Malmal, Star-2, TS-501, H-71, H-121, H-122 and IR-3701 were sown in a split plot design having four replications. Three treatments including T1; Control, T2; five irrigations and T3; three irrigations for drought tolerance were studied. Plant height (cm), sympodial branches plant-1, bolls plant-1, boll weight (g) and seed cotton yield plant-1 (g) were evaluated. The mean squares from analysis of variances showed that genotypes differed significantly for plant height, bolls plant-1, sympodial branches plant-1, boll weight and seed cotton yield plant-1. Mean squares also showed that irrigation regimes cause significant impact on the yield traits. The genotypes Sindh-1, Shahbaz-95 and Star-2 performed well over the irrigation regimes for yield traits and pronounced minimum yield losses under less number of irrigations; hence selection could be made from these genotypes for developing drought tolerant cotton genotypes.