Agronomic Performance of Seeds of Some Bread Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) Cultivars Exposed to Drought Stress

This study was carried out to determine agronomic performance of seeds of some bread wheat cultivars exposed to artificial drought stress. Seeds obtained from eight bread wheat cultivars with different response to drought (Konya 2002, Alpu 2001, Sultan 95 and Eser as drought sensitive cultivars; Karahan 99, Tosunbey, Kate A1 as drought resistant cultivars and Golia as moderate drought resistant cultivar) after their treatment, in previous years, by artificial drought stress through using chemical desiccant (4% potassium cholorate-KClO3 at the post-anthesis stage) were used as experimental material. The field experiment was arranged in a split-plot design with 3 replicates during 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 wheat growing seasons. Cultivars were adjusted as main plots and seeds were allotted as subplots. In the experiment, seeds obtained from desiccant applied plants (SDAP) and control (non-desiccant) plants (SCP) were compared for plant height (PH), spike length (SL), number of grain per spike (NGPS), grain weight per spike (GWPS), grain yield (GY) and thousand kernel weight (TKW). It was determined that the drought resistant cultivars had generally higher values for PH, GWPS, GY and TKW than the other cultivars. However, the highest NGPS was obtained from the drought sensitive cultivars. The study has shown that desiccant application has detractive impact on seed size in all cultivars. Therefore, the SCP showed significantly higher performance for all examined traits than the SDAP. Consequently, data showed that artificial drought stress by chemical desiccant application at the post-athesis stage affected negatively seed quality in bread wheat