Determination of drought tolerance and agricultural characteristics of some bread wheat genotypes

This study was carried out to determine agronomic features and drought tolerance of some wheat landraces collected in Turkey and some bread wheat genotypes developed for dry conditions by IWWIP under Konya ecological conditions. The trials were established in the split plots arrangement in randomized blocks, with three replications in the 2018-2019 growing season in Konya; irrigated (U1) and dry (U2) applications were used in the main plots and 25 bread wheat genotypes were used in the subplots. In the research, in order to determine the yield stability of the genotypes, the grain yield values obtained from the trials established in Eskişehir and Ankara with the same varieties were used. In the study, yield and yield components, morphological, phenological and physiological characteristics and drought tolerance of genotypes were evaluated and the relationships between traits were examined. Average grain yield in the study was 441 kg/da in drought-applied plots (U2) and 587 kg/da in irrigated plots (U1). As the average of wet and dry applications, the grain yield of the genotypes varied between 239 kg/da (G18) and 801 kg/da (G11). In drought application, grain yield decreased by 24.9 % compared to wet application. The drought sensitivity index values ranged from 0.35 (G14) to 1.79 (G12). G9 was determined as the stable genotype with the highest general adaptation ability. Yield components and morphological characteristics were generally adversely affected by drought stress. Among the examined features, 210 simple relationships were determined, 81 of these relationships had a statistically significant correlation coefficient, 49 of which were positive and significant, and 32 were negative and significant. The highest correlation was determined between the number of grain per spike and grain weight per spike (r = 0.93 **). In this study, it was found that some advanced breeding lines gained important features that support drought tolerance and high yielding through breeding studies. Although, landraces have adaptation to drought, their grain yield levels are quite low, but they can be considered as an important gene resource on traits other than grain yield in developing new breeding lines for drought tolerance.