Study of drought tolerance of Berseem and Persian clover cultivars

In order to identify genotypes with drought tolerance in one year clover, ten type Iranian clovers and Berseem were evaluated in Research Farm of Islamic Azad University, Karaj Branch in 2015. This experiment was conducted in split plots in a randomized complete block with three replications. In this research, drought stress was studied as the main factor in three levels (no stress, average stress and high stress) and also different cultivars of Berseem and Iranian clovers as sub factor in ten levels. Irrigation circles in treatments without stress, average stress and high stress were 7, 10 and 14 days. Cultivars were investigated included Berseem clover (Karaj, Elite, Ekinaton, Win and Alex genotypes) and Iranian clover (Aleshtar, Eghlid, Harati, Zabol and 13 Line). Traits in this experiment contained fresh and dried forage yield, In this study, in order to genotypes yield in without / with stress condition, tolerance indicators including mean productivity (MP), tolerance index (TOL), geometric mean productivity (GMP) and Stress susceptibility index (SSI), Stress tolerance index (STI) were evaluated. The result of correlations among drought indices and Yp and Ys showed that MP, GMP, and STI were highly correlated with Yp and Ys. Based on the values of indices and higher forage yield, in stress and non-stress conditions, ecotype Karaj, Elite, Win and Alex were recognized to be as the most tolerant ecotype against drought.