The effect of drought stress on breeding genotypes of sugar beet under greenhouse conditions

Due to decreasing annual rainfall and increasing drought and temperature, creating tolerant and high yield potential cultivars in sugar beet is very important for breeders. For this purpose, to investigate the effect of drought stress on functional and morphological traits of sugar beet and to investigate the relationship between these traits with yield in greenhouse conditions, 140 sugar beet genotypes under greenhouse conditions in Karaj Sugar Beet center in 2015 were evaluated for yield traits. The results showed that the effect of genotype was significant for traits except of leaf area and relative water content, indicating that there was variation among genotypes and selection of superior genotypes. Drought stress decreased all traits but this effect was not significant on root dry weight, shoot dry weight and total dry weight. Also, petiole length had a positive and significant correlation with root and shoot dry weight and root length in drought condition but under normal condition, no significant correlation was observed. And it seems that this trait may be a criterion for selection of resistant genotypes under drought stress.