Assessment of Water Stress Tolerance in Wheat Genotypes Based on Half Diallel Analysis and DNA Fingerprinting

Deficit or scarcity of water resources are considering as one of the most serious environmental phenomenon that hinder agricultural production in many countries and the present study evaluated some wheat accessions for water stress tolerance under Egyptian conditions.

Five wheat genotypes and their ten F1 crosses from half diallel analysis were tested under both levels of irrigation (normal and drought stress conditions) through estimating some agro-morphological traits in addition, determining DNA fingerprinting meanwhile using five RAPD-PCR primers.

Final results detected that 4 parents and the best 5 F1 crosses were the most desirable genotypes for water stress tolerance depending on all results obtained for all calculated parameters under normal and water deficit treatments.

Traditional breeding and DNA fingerprinting could be used to clarify and sort all genotypes to generate the best of them for water stress resistance which will be in the future as a nucleus for producing resistance wheat varieties for drought stress under Egyptian conditions.