The drought tolerant ability in local sticky corn cultivars and its relationship with the change of anthocyanin content at young plant stage

Zea mays subsp.  ceratina is one of the widely grown grain crop in Vietnam, especially in arid mountainous areas in the North. Anthocyanins comprised the group of natural pigments that used safely in foods and functional food. They play an important roles in photoprotection, antioxidant activity and biological defence. This article presents the results on accession of drought tolerant ability in maize and its relationship with anthocyanin content. The drought tolerance ability of local sticky corn cultivars was different. Mo and NH were the two cultivars with the highest drought tolerance, their drought tolerant indexes were 16276.03 and 18365.61. BS1, DG2 and KL were the three lowest, their drought tolerant indexes were 9789.72; 10340.04 and 10449.08, respectively. Except BS1, ĐX2 and KL, anthocyanin contents of investigated artificial drought treated (1 to 5 days) cultivars were higher than those of controls and decreased after 7 days strongly, and increased after 9 days The highest anthocyanin contents were recorded in NH, Mo and TB. Anthocyanin content and drought tolerance were positively correlated, the form of linear equations is y = aX + b, coefficients of regression ranged from 0.80 to 0.99 were obtained before seven-day drought treatment, and 1.0 after seven-day drought treatment .