Plant Physiology & Pathology

Biography

Biography: D L Savitramma

Abstract

Plant root is one of the major organs for water and nutrient uptake from soil. Root development and amount of water absorption from the soil are closely related. Under drought condition the success of crop plants is oft en dependent on the growth of roots. In the present study gravimetric experiment was conducted to evaluate the potential of released and prereleased groundnut genotypes, root growth parameters such as root length, shoot length, shoot weight, leaf length, root volume and dry root weight were taken in fi ve genotypes viz., KCG-2, TMV-2, GKVK-5, GKVK-3 and GKVK-13 under controlled and water stress condition in pot experiment at University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore, India. Stress was imposed for 20 days during fl owering stage by balancing the amount of water applied to make it 50% stress. Analysis of variance revealed highly signifi cant diff erences for all the traits studied indicating the variability in the material. In controlled condition all the root traits exhibited higher mean values over stress condition in all the genotypes studied except in GKVK-5 for root dry weight. In stress condition GKVK-5, GKVK-3 and GKVK-13 genotypes exhibited higher mean for root volume, root dry weight and root length. Genotypes GKVK-5, TMV-2 and KCG-2 showed higher mean for shoot weight and leaf length. Among all genotypes GKVK-5 was identifi ed as high yielding with 28 to 30 quintals per hectare, with low to moderate Δ13C (17.53) and high δ18O (31.24) and low specifi c leaf area (107.76 cm2/g) and is found to be having higher water use effi ciency or drought tolerant genotype that indicated eff ective partitioning of the accumulated biomass, more towards root and shoot while relatively less towards shoot biomass. Hence, breeding for root development proved to be eff ective in increasing crop water use effi ciency and drought tolerance.