Screening of Capsicum annuum and its related species for drought tolerance

Abstract

Chilli is an inevitable vegetable cum spice crop and its production is taken up both under rainfed and irrigated conditions. At present the local types available in a particular region are grown under rainfed conditions traditionally and they could able to withstand under drought to some extent but records lower yield. There is no exclusive variety / hybrid has been developed for drought tolerance to cultivate under rainfed condition. Therefore an effort was made to screen sixty-six cultivars of chilli belonging to Capsicum annuum, C. frutescens and C. baccatum for drought tolerance by using polyethylene glycol (PEG). Important growth parameters like germination percentage, shoot length, root length, total length of seedling, vigour index and stress tolerance index were observed. The study revealed that, among the sixty-six genotypes evaluated, the genotypes viz., IC-119231, ST 13837 and EC 362917 were found to be highly tolerant to drought, since they recorded higher germination percentage (76.67, 80.00 and 73.33), total length of seedling (9.63, 3.13 and 6.83), vigour index (739.33, 250.00 and 501.33) and stress tolerance index (67.77,66.40 and 65.34) respectively.