Vol. 11, Special Issue 8 (2022)

Author(s):
KB Choudhary, Ranveer Singh, Sonu Get, Madhu Yadav, Madhu Choudhary and Sumer Poonia

Abstract:
Groundnut is an important legume crop both in subsistence and marketable farming in arid and semi-arid regions of the world. The irregular rainfall in the rainfed conditions has been denoted as a most significant climatic factor affecting groundnut production in the arid and semi-arid regions among the numerous abiotic stresses. Tailoring groundnut varieties with tolerance to drought and efficient in water use offers the best long term and cost-effective solution to encounter the uncertainty of monsoon and shrinking availability of irrigation water in country. Hence, a set of sixty groundnut genotypes were evaluated for their drought tolerance towards limited moister availability in rainfed conditions on the basis of three stress susceptibility indices; drought susceptibility index (DSI), drought tolerance efficiency (DTE) and stress tolerance index (STI). These indices have been calculated for eight yield related morpho-physiological traits, which depicted their relative performance under drought stressed conditions in comparison with fully irrigated conditions. On the basis of average ranking RG-559-3, RG-510, RG-425, MH-1, RG-562, GG-14, DGR-7, ICGV-6052 were identified as promising drought tolerant genotypes owing to their lower DSI (<0.80), higher DTE (>80%) and STI (>45) values. A higher amount of transgressive segregants can be obtained by using these cultivars in purposeful hybridization for drought tolerance traits, hence these cultivars further can be used in tailoring drought tolerance in putative groundnut genotypes to mitigate the limited moisture stress conditions.