EVALUATION OF SOME GRAIN SORGHUM GENOTYPES UNDER DROUGHT ENVIRONMENTS

Abstract

Drought adversely affects growth and yield of crops to various extents. Growing of drought tolerant crops is a good option. For this reason, a field experiment was conducted to evaluate forty grain sorghum hybrids, their parental lines and Shandaweel) as check hybrid under normal and drought conditions (100 and 50% of evapotranspiration (ET)) at Shandaweel Agric. Res. Stat. in 2019 and 2020 growing seasons. The combined analysis of variance over the two environments was done in 2019 and 2020. The results showed that significant differences were existed among the tow irrigation treatments, genotypes (parents and their F1, s hybrid) for all studied traits, revealing a large amount of variability among them. Significance of parent vs. crosses indicated the presence of heterotic effects that were highly significant for all the studied traits. Drought susceptibility index indicated that there were nine hybrids were the best drought tolerant ones (ATXTSC-20 x 86 EO-361, ATXTSC-20 x RTX-2817, ICSA-37 x 86 EO-361, ICSA-37 x TAM-428, ICSA-37 x RTX-2817, ICSA-37 x RTX- 2895, ATX-407 x TAM-428, ATX-407 x RTX-2817 and ATX-BON-44x RTX-2817). The best drought tolerant parental lines were ATXTSC-20, ICSA-37, TAM-428, RTX-5646, RTX-2817 and ICSR-2908. The best general combiners for grain yield per plant ATXTSC-20 and ICSA-37 the female lines and the 86EO-361 and RTX-2809 male lines showed positive and significant general comping ability (GCA) effects under normal and drought conditions. The best SCA hybrids were nine crosses for grain yield per plant out of four forty hybrids that showed positive and significant SCA effects under drought conditions. Heterosis related to the better parents showed that the best hybrids under drought conditions were nine crosses for grain yield and some of the other studied traits.