Vol. 11, Issue 9 (2022)

Author(s):
Gagendra Singh Rajput, VB Kuruwanshi and Arti Guhey

Abstract:
Drought is the major concern of Indian agriculture under changing scenario of climate to sustain the productivity and to fulfill the food requirement of ever increasing population. Hence, the present study was carried out at Research cum Instructional Farm and Department of Plant Physiology, Agricultural Biochemistry, Medicinal and Aromatic Plants, College of Agriculture, Indira Gandhi Krishi Vishwavidyalaya, Raipur (C.G.) during Kharif during 2018-19 and 2019-20. The planting materials for experiment consisted of 30 rice genotypes from IIRR, Hyderabad under AICRP on rice programme and 01 local check (Poornima) from IGKV, Raipur (C.G.). In first year (2018-19), 30 rice genotypes were treated with four different levels of PEG namely (T₁- Control (Distilled water), T₂- PEG @ 5%, T₃- PEG @ 10% and T4- PEG @ 15%) in a petri dish under complete randomized design (CRD) design with three replications. The water deficit stress was artificially induced by desired strengths of polyethylene glycol 6000 (PEG-6000; Sigma Chemicals) in growth chamber at 25±0.5 °C and 80%±1 relative humidity to screening the rice genotypes. The PEG study like the germination per cent, germination index, seedling height, seedling dry weight, and relative dry weight of all tested rice genotypes were found decreasing trends with increasing the levels of PEG from 0 to 15% level. Among these rice genotypes, Poornima (LC) followed by RFU 329 > RFU 327 > RFU 304 were performed better in terms of germination per cent, germination index, seedling height, seedling dry weight and relative dry weight under artificially induced stress by using PEG.