Effectiveness of drought tolerance to identify tolerant genotypes with high yielding potential in cotton (gossypium hirsutum L.)

The screening of 21 cotton genotypes for drought stress tolerance was done under water limiting conditions in field where drought stress was imposed based on three treatments along with control viz., vegetative, squaring and boll development by adopting factorial randomized block design with three replications. The physiological traits such as chlorophyll stability index and relative water content decreased with increased water stress under water deficit conditions were studied to correlate with yield parameters. Results revealed that selected genotypes showed maximum chlorophyll stability index, relative water content and yield component but a minimum number of flower drop indicating that these genotypes are tolerant to drought and can be used for selection and as a source of drought responsive genes in future crop improvement programme of cotton. The results also revealed high significant difference among genotypes for all the studied physiological and morphological traits under normal and drought treatments.