Evaluation the performance of some of Iran's native fennel (Foeniculum vulgare Mill.) accessions under drought stress condition

In order to evaluate the effect of drought stress on grain yield and its components of fennel accessions, a field experiment was conducted as a split plot based on complete randomized block design with three replications. This experiment was conducted in research farm of Agricultural faculty of Zanjan University in 2012. In this study water stress in two levels included control and drought stress at reproductive stage were assigned to the main plots and five Iranian accessions of fennel included Zanjan, Lorestan, Esfahan, Hamedan and Kashan were assigned to the sub plots. The results showed that the effect of drought stress on grain yield and its components, biomass yield, grain essential oil percent and essential oil yield was significant (p≤0.05). Also there were significant differences between Fennel populations about all studied traits. Majority of measured traits decreased under drought stress condition. So the highest grain yield (3284 kg/ha) was obtained in Zanjan accession and control conditions and the lowest amount of mentioned trait (1306 kg/ha) was obtained in Esfahan accession under drought stress condition. Kashan and Isfahan accessions had the highest and lowest essential oil yield respectively.