Diversity for osmotic adjustment and root depth in TEF [Eragrostis tef (Zucc) Trotter]

Osmotic adjustment (OA) and deep roots were shown to be important drought resistance mechanism in many crop plants. In this study, geno types systematically selected from an Ethiopian endemic tef [Eragrostis tef (Zucc) Trotter] germplasm pool were evaluated for osmotic adjustment and root depth in greenhouse in several experiments. The association of these traits with other plant characters was also studied. Osmotic adjustment was investigated in two experiments. Experiment 1 was conducted using nine genotypes for two seasons (spring and fall 1996), and experiment 2 was undertaken in the spring of 1997 with 45 genotypes. In experiment 1, there were significant genotype effects on OA. Though there was also significant genotype by season interaction for OA, some of the extreme lines gave consistently high (Ada and DZ-01-99) and low (DZ-01-354 and Trotteriana) OA values across seasons. There was a significant variation among genotypes for OA in experiment 2. Osmotic adjustment was not associated with the altitude of the region of origin of the particular tef genotype. In both experiments, OA was significantly correlated across tef genotypes with delayed wilting and the maintenance of higher relative water content (RWC) under conditions of soil moisture stress. Three experiments were conducted to evaluate the phenotypic diversity for root depth. In all experiments tef genotypes differed significantly for root depth as measured at flowering time. The late maturing genotypes tended to have greater root depth as compared to early maturing genotypes. Root depth was not associated with the altitude of the region of origin of the tested genotypes. There was no association between root depth and OA across genotypes.