Variability of Root and Shoot Traits under PEG-Induced Drought Stress at an Early Vegetative Growth Stage of Soybean

The performance of a soybean genotype under water deficit stress at an early vegetative stage might be related to its general tolerance to drought. To investigate the plasticity of root and shoot seedling traits in response to drought at an early vegetative stage, a set of 32 soybean genotypes adapt...

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Published inAgronomy (Basel) Vol. 14; no. 6; p. 1188
Main Authors Bukan, Miroslav, Kereša, Snježana, Pejić, Ivan, Sudarić, Aleksandra, Lovrić, Ana, Šarčević, Hrvoje
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 01.06.2024
Subjects
Correlation coefficient
Correlation coefficients
Croatia
Drought
drought stress
Droughts
Dry matter
Genotypes
Growth stage
Heritability
PEG
Polyethylene glycol
Polyols
root and shoot traits
Seedlings
Shoots
Soybean
Soybeans
Variance analysis
Water deficit
Croatia
United States > US
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Summary:The performance of a soybean genotype under water deficit stress at an early vegetative stage might be related to its general tolerance to drought. To investigate the plasticity of root and shoot seedling traits in response to drought at an early vegetative stage, a set of 32 soybean genotypes adapted to southeast European growing conditions was grown under polyethylene glycol (PEG) 8000-induced drought stress and well-watered control conditions. Under drought, mean tap root length (RL), shoot length (SL), root fresh weight (RFW) and shoot fresh weight (SFW) decreased significantly by 11, 17, 38 and 34%, respectively, while root dry matter (RDM) and shoot dry matter (SDM) increased significantly by 13 and 11%, respectively. Of the four derived traits, the ratios of RL/SL, RL/RFW and SL/SFW increased significantly by 8, 45 and 28%, respectively, under drought, while the ratio of RFW/SFW decreased significantly by 4%. However, a wide variation between genotypes was observed for all 10 studied seedling traits under both control and drought conditions. Broad sense heritability ranged from 0.53 (RL) to 0.97 (SL) under control conditions and from 0.56 (RL/RFW) to 0.96 (SL) under drought conditions. The correlation coefficients between the traits were either weak or moderate, indicating that the studied traits can be modified independently by selection.
ISSN:2073-4395
2073-4395
DOI:10.3390/agronomy14061188