Deciphering Drought Tolerance Potential of Saccharum spontaneum in Tropical Climates Using Multivariate Techniques
摘要
Saccharum spontaneum, a wild progenitor of sugarcane, serves as a vital source of genes for resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses, particularly tolerance to water stress. To assess the drought tolerance potential of Saccharum spontaneum, 40 accessions along with two checks were evaluated in four environments for four drought-related traits, namely fresh biomass per clump (FBM), dry biomass per clump (DBM), tiller number per clump (TILL), and stalk height (SH) under control and drought treatments. Significant reductions in trait values were observed in each of these traits, and analysis of variance revealed significant differences among the accessions for stress tolerance and differential performance of accessions in control and drought. Among five computed stress tolerance indices for four traits, drought tolerance coefficient (DC) and geometric mean productivity (GMP) were uncorrelated, and promising genotypes were selected based on an integrated comprehensive index termed as membership function value for drought tolerance (MFVD) for each trait and across the traits. Considering environment-wise and pooled multivariate analyses, accessions IND 04–1372, IND 99–847, IND 99–850, IND 99–984, and IND 03–1307 were considered to be tolerant to drought and could serve as potential parents for trait introgression through developing trait-specific genetic stocks via interspecific hybridization.