Assessment of the Performance of Some Peanut Genotypes under Drought Conditions

Abstract

This study was conducted during the two successive seasons 2019 and 2020 to evaluate the performance of peanut genotypes under drought stress using eleven agronomic traits and six Simple Sequence Repeat (SSR) markers. The results of the analysis of variance showed that significant variations exist for all the phenotypic traits measured among the varieties. Phenotypic coefficient of variation and genotypic coefficient of variation (PCV and GCV) were higher under stress conditions than controlled conditions excepting number of pods per plant and pods-weight per plan. Heritability reached more than 94% for most studied traits with exception to the number of branches per plant and pods-yield per feddan (8.5% and 70.7%, respectively) under stress conditions. Genetic advance as percent of the mean (GAM) reached more than 93.5 % for all traits under control and stress conditions excepting a number of branches per plant was 41.6% under stress condition. Four SSR markers produced 10 alleles with average of 2.5 per locus and exhibited a reasonable percentage of polymorphism (0.50). Values of polymorphic information content (PIC) varied from 0.25 to 0.78 with average of 0.56. Heterozygosity values ranged from 0.27 to 0.77 with average of 0.50. However, this result showed that SSR markers had no specific genes linked to drought tolerance. But it might indicate that these types of SSR markers are very efficient and useful.