a study on the root physiology and architecture under drought stress in pearl millet pennisetum glaucum

Abstract

newline Plant productivity is greatly affected by environmental stresses and drought stress newlineis one among the worst scourges of agriculture. Pearl millet, grown in arid and semi-arid newlineregion is sensitive to drought stress, particularly during flowering to seed development newlinestage. Phenotypic evaluation is regarded as an attractive approach because it is a high newlinethroughput and low cost method that saves space and time. Root physiology and newlinemorphology are least studied in pearl millet due to difficulties in soil excavation and root newlineextraction process. However, to understand the drought tolerance characters of pearl newlinemillet, studies are needed to focus on root physiology and architecture. Hence, the present newlineexperiment was planned to focus on the root characters, physiology, biochemical and newlineyield characters of pearl millet genotypes under drought stress condition. newlineThe present investigation entitled A study on the root physiology and newlinearchitecture under drought stress in Pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum) was carried out newlineduring 2017-19 at the Department of Crop Physiology, Tamil Nadu Agricultural newlineUniversity, Coimbatore. Pearl millet seeds were collected from the Department of Plant newlineGenetic Resources, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore. Fifty pearl millet newlinegenotypes were used for screen under drought condition. Drought stress was applied in newlinefive concentrations of PEG 6000 that provide solutions with water potential equal to newline-3 bars, -4 bars, -5 bars, -6 bars and -7 bars. Seeds were allowed to germinate in newlinepetridishes. All the pearl millet genotypes show significant performance under control newlinecondition. While increasing the drought stress level, every genotype behaves differently newlinedepending upon its stress tolerance. Most of the genotypes tolerated -5 bars of PEG 6000 newlinestress. Apart from this, some of the genotype germinates in -6 bars concentration. newlineThe increased stress level showed the variation among the genotype germination newlinepotential and results was evaluated based on germination percent