Assessment of some morphophysiological traits and drought tolerance at the end of the growing season of a number lentil genotypes

Lentil is a rich source of protein, fiber, minerals, antioxidants, folate, zinc, selenium, iron, and low amounts of fat and carbohydrates. Increasing water shortage and drought stress will be a major threat to global lentil production. The present study was conducted to determine the morphophysiological traits and grain of yield under normal and drought stress conditions, investigate tolerance indices and identify drought tolerance in some lentil genotypes.

In this experiment, twenty - four lentil genotypes were evaluated in the research farm of Shahrekord Faculty of Agriculture in two drought-stress environments and the normal conditions of the region in two separate randomized complete block designs with three replications experiments. In the 50% flowering stage, drought stress was done by completely stopping irrigation for the genotypes. Sampling was done at the end of the growing season. In this experiment, morphophysiological and yield traits were measured.

The results of composite data analysis showed that the effect of environment, genotype and the interaction effect of genotype × environment were significant on most traits. The share of these sources of variation in diversity of triats was different and environment placed on the most role in the diversity of seed yield (55.27%), genotype in the diversity of 100 seed weight (64.6%) and the number of single seed pods (53.9%). Seed yield in normal agricultural conditions has a positive correlation with most of the traits. In addition, under stress conditions, more traits had a significant correlation with grain yield. STI and GMP indices were highly correlated with yield in both environments and these indices can be used to select the superior genotype. Examining the main components of the indicators showed that the first component and two components justify 97.66% of the changes, the first component was introduced as a semi-tolerant component and the second component as a tolerant component. The results of the cluster analysis put the genotypes in three general groups. The results of cluster analysis based on STI and GMP indices put the genotypes in three separate groups.

One of the main goals of production programs in arid and semi-arid regions is the screening of germplasm in different stages of plant growth. The results of the present research showed that drought stress in the reproductive stage reduces the morphophysiological traits and yield of lentil genotypes. Based on the results of seed yield, Kimia genotype with the lowest yield loss is known as the tolerant variety and C113 variety with the highest yield loss is known as the sensitive variety. Based on the results of seed yield, Kimia genotype with the lowest yield loss is known as the tolerant variety and C113 variety with the highest yield loss is known as the sensitive variety.