Mohamad Nael Khattab*⁽¹⁾ Nabil Habib⁽¹⁾ and Sahar Hanifa⁽¹⁾

(1). Crops Field Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Tishreen University, Latakia, Syria.

(*Corresponding author: Dr. Mohamad Nael Khattab. E-Mail: aboalabd876@gmail.com).

Received: 02/05/2018                                Accepted: 01/10/2018

Abstract

The research was carried out in the coastal region (Ashrafieh village of Jibla district) and in the laboratories of the Faculty of Agriculture, Tishreen University, during the season 2018 to study the effect of water stress on five soybeans genotypes (Sb335, Sb337, Sb339, Sb342, Sb344), to determine which of them more resistant to drought through productive indicators and their components, and to study the establishment of selectorial indices for production attributes to determine which of them can be considered as criterion for high productivity under water stress conditions. The experiment was carried out according to the split block design with three replicates. The water stress treatments were applicated in the main plots (from the beginning of the flowering stage and the beginning of the fullness of the pods), while the secondary plots included the five soybeans genotypes. Most of the studied traits showed high GCV values and were associated with a high inheritance coefficient indicating that these traits were relatively less affected by the environment. The results showed that water stress caused a significant decrease in productivity and all its studied components compared to normal irrigation treatment (control). Sb 335 genotype had the lowest reduction in all studied indicators, while the genotypes Sb 337 and Sb 344 were the most sensitive to stress. The decrease was due to the effect of water stress on the characteristics of the studied genotypes with the percentage of increase in the proline content. The productivity of seeds was positively and significant correlated with the weight of pods (r = 0.92 **) and the number of seeds per plant (r = 0.94 **). These traits showed high values of GCV, GA% and H²_B. This study indicated the possibility of using weight of pods and number of seeds per plant as selectorial criterion to improve seed productivity.

Key words: Soybeans, Water stress, Proline, Genetic variation, Correlation.

Full paper in Arabic: PDF