Determination of drought response of Turkish maize landraces

Maize grown in temperate and tropical regions in the world is used as human and animal nutrition and industry raw material. Maize farming is generally made based on irrigation in Turkey. Among the stress factors occurring in agricultural areas, drought stress is the first with a share of 26%. Sixteen local flint corn populations and 3 hybrid dent corn varieties which collected from different provinces of the Black Sea and East Marmara regions of Turkey were tested to determine the drought tolerance at both Diyarbakir field conditions and germination test. Irrigation of maize was realized according to the amount of evaporation determined from the Class A evaporation pan, 50% (I 50) and 150% (I 150) of the evaporation from the surface of the pan. In addition to the two-years field study, some germination related morphological properties of maize genotypes were examined in different drought doses (0 MPa, -0.3 MPa, -0.6 MPa, -0.9 MPa and -1.2 MPa) created by PEG 6000 under laboratory conditions. The data obtained at the study ranged from 34 to 59 (days) for days to tassel , 37 to 61 (days) for days to silk, 154.70 to 321.49 cm for plant height, 57.07 to 180.93 cm for first ear height, 9.77 to 19.48 cm for cob length, 16.94 to 44.61 mm for ear diameter, 14.7 to 1597.1 kg/da for grain yield, 41.92 to 391.33 g for thousand kernel weight, 51.77 to 85.49 kg/hl for hectoliter weight, 7.40 to 15.24% for rate of protein, 2.84 to 5.88% for oil content, 60.00 to 72.54% for starch content, 37.13 to 59.20 SPAD value, and 0.04 to 2.73 kg/m3 for water use efficiency. In terms of drought tolerance index, eight genotypes were determined as moderate susceptible and the genotypes of DZM-28, DZM-45, DZM-199, DZM-47, DZM-14 and DZM-72 were moderately tolerant. It has been shown, especially DZM-25 and DZM -161 genotypes have been determined as promising genotypes in breeding programs aiming to favorable conditions. The rate of germination ranged from 66.25-96.25% for control group, 62.50-95.00% for -0.3 MPa, 35.00-71.25% for -0.6 MPa, and 5.00-56.25% for -0.9 MPa applications. As a result of the germination study carried out under different osmotic pressures, DZM-14 genotype has the stand out other genotypes with high germination and seedling growth ability during germination stage.