The Effect of Drought Stress on Morphological Characteristics and Yield Components of Medicinal Plant Fenugreek

Fenugreek (Trigonella foenum-graecum L.) is one of the oldest medicinal plants. In order to study water-stress effects on some morphological characteristics of fenugreek, an experiment was carried out in a strip plots based on randomized complete blocks design with three replicates, at Research Farm of Shahrekord University, Shahrekord, Iran, in 2010. The first factor was allocated to four water stress levels (irrigation after depletion of 20 (as control), 40, 60 and 80% of available soil moisture) and the second factor was six fenugreek landraces (Shiraz, Ardestan, Tirancheh, Yazd, Jahrom and Hindi). The results of ANOVA and comparison of means indicated that the effect of water stress was significant for all traits and variation was observed among landraces for all the studied characteristics. Mean comparison showed that drought stress reduced days to flowering, days to maturity, plant height and yield components (number of pods per plant, number of seeds per pod and 1000-kernel weight). It was also revealed that water stress caused reduction in biological yield (43%) and grain yield (42.3%) of all genotypes. Comparison between landraces indicated that maximum biological and grain yield belonged to Ardestan landrace. Assessment of cluster analysis showed that it was possible to classify Ardestan, Shiraz and Tirancheh as a single group having tolerance to water stress. In general, based on obtained results, the Ardestan landrace, with 22.37 g/plant, had the highest biological yield and Hindi landrace, with 73.83 days to maturity, was the most early-maturing one.