Effect of heat stress on growth indices in garden pea (Pisum sativum var. hortense)

Abstract

Heat stress is a serious threat to crop production worldwide, due to global warming. High temperature adversely affects the crop growth, development and economic yield. It causes reduction in shoot dry mass, growth and net assimilation rates. Garden pea being a cool season crop is affected by high temperature as compared to other summer season crops. With an objective to find out the effect of heat stress on growth indices like CGR, NAR, LAI, etc. the study was conducted. The results depicted that heat stress affects the growth indices by reducing the biomass accumulation; however, the rate of biomass accumulation is related to tolerance level of the genotype to heat stress. The heat tolerant genotypes performed better in natural heat stress conditions as compared to susceptible genotypes.