The effect of drought stress on some landraces and varieties of Urfa pepper

Drought has reduced yield and quality of pepper production in recent years and has put grower in difficult situation. The most important way to reduce the negative effects of drought in pepper production is to determine the drought resistant or tolerant varieties and to present them to the producers. The genotypes determined tolerant will be effective in breeding studies. Therefore, the present study aimed to determine the variety of pepper which is tolerant to drought in our Country and Şanlıurfa province where agricultural production is rich. The seeds of Gölpınar, Hilvan, Inan 3363 and Osmanbey pepper varieties were sown in a 1 litres-pots that contains garden soil and experiments were established by means of randomized complete block design with three replications. In the study that detect tolerant and sensitive genotypes to drought; plant fresh and dry weights, leaf numbers, stem-neck diameters, plant heights, leaf membrane damage indices, leaf proportional water contents, chlorophyll a, chlorophyll b, chlorophyll a+b, malondialdehyde (MDA), catalase (CAT), Superoxide dismutases (SOD), ascorbate peroxidase (APX), K, Ca and Mg were investigated and these parameters were found to be effective in determining sensitive and tolerant levels of drought. In our study, Gölpınar and Hilvan genotypes were determined as tolerant genotypes for drought whereas Inan 3363 standard variety was determined as sensitive for drought.