Abstract

Due to the rapid climatic change drought becomes abiotic constraint globally. A factorial laboratory experiment was designed with CRD to evaluate the effects of kernel priming on wheat cultivars under induced drought stress. Seven common wheat cultivars in Kurdistan (Adana, Maxipak, Sham4, Sham6, Aras, Azadi and Rizgari) were tested under different negative osmotic solutions (0, -0.5, -1 and -1.5 Mpa), using Polyethylene glycol (PEG-6000). Among different cultivars Azadi exhibited better survival at high levels of drought stress for germination and its related traits. It also revealed high performance for shoot growth under the water stress, which was affirmed by the principal component analysis and cluster analysis. The superiority of this cultivar might be refer to exposing of this genotype to natural selection for a long duration under semiarid conditions of the local environment. Rizgari also had better performance mostly for the seedling characteristics, being a suitable cultivar for the late induced drought. The other cultivars had an intermediate response to the induced drought stress. This method could assist the plant breeder for rapid detection of drought tolerant genotypes in a large population with the reduced cost and labor compared to field trials.

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