Selection of Russian Grape Cultivars for Drought Tolerance Based on Morphological Traits

Water deficit damage productivity in agricultural and horticultural products in many regions of the world. In present study, the drought tolerance of 69 Russian grapevine genotypes were evaluated for drought tolerance in the collection of foreign grape genotypes in Grape Research Station. These genotypes were planted on 9 × 8 rectangular lattice design. Vitis vinifera var. White Bidaneh is regarded as control plots in three plots. In this experiment, related traits to the drought tolerance such as leaf relative water content, leaf cuticle diameter, leaf area, number of abaxial stomata, canopy temperatures and fruit ripening were measured. Data were analyzed by SPSS and MSTAT-C software and the means were compared using Duncan’s multiple range test (DMRT). Genetics parameters of characters such as heritability, phenotypic, genotypic and environmental variances and coefficients of variation were calculated by mathematical expectation of sum of mean square in ANOVA. For final morphological screen of genotypes to drought tolerance, ranking method on the base of compare means and cluster analysis were used. Results indicated that genotypes 14, 30, 35, 49, 54 and 60 were the best genotypes for morphological drought tolerance.