Assessment of drought tolerance in Nagina 22 mutants of rice using Poly Ethylene Glycol (PEG)

Abstract

A laboratory experiment was conducted to screen 500 EMS induced mutants of Nagina22 using low molecular osmotic PEG-6000. The analysis of variance showed that all ten characters showed significant variation at 1% probability level. Nagina22 was screened under six moisture regimes as 0,-2,-4,-6,-8 and-10 bars of PEG-6000 and-6 bars was fixed as optimum concentration for mutant screening. Results of correlation revealed that relative seedling vigour showed positive significant correlation with all characters studied except root length stress index and relative root number. Based on PCA, emergence percentage, promptness index and seedling vigour was considered as selection criteria for selecting drought tolerant mutants under moisture stress. N22-PDT-17 and N22-PDT-64 recorded highest value for all the characters studied except number of roots than Nagina22. Hence, these two mutants were selected as better mutants with altered drought response and could be further validated under natural drought environment.