Investigation of physiological and molecular parameters of durum wheat proteins in 20 Advanced lines under water stress

In order to investigate different lines of durum wheat for water stress tolerance, an experiment was carried out in the greenhouse in the form of a split plot design in a Randomized complete block design with three replications using 20 lines of durum wheat at two levels of water stress (40% and 70% of the amount of available water was completely drained in 0.4 and 0.7 levels of stress, respectively and re-irrigation was performed) and a control level (complete irrigation). Also, water-soluble and salt-soluble proteins were extracted and SDS-PAGE was done. Measured traits were photosynthetic pigments (chlorophyll a, chlorophyll b, chlorophyll a/b, total chlorophyll and carotenoids), soluble sugar and prolin content. The results of the analysis of variance showed that there was a significant difference between the studied lines at different levels of stress. The results of comparing the mean of the studied traits showed that in total, lines 16 and 5 have the highest value in most of the traits and lines 10 and 18 have the lowest value in most of the traits. Also, the results obtained from the cluster analysis indicated that due to the higher mean values compared to the other lines both in stress-free and stress conditions, lines 16 and 5 (Mra-1/4/Aus1/3/Scar/GdoVZ579//BitI, TRN//21563/AA/3/BD2080/4/BD2339/5/RASCON_37/TARRO_2//) have a higher performance stability in the different environmental conditions. Furthermore, the results of molecular analysis of the studied proteins showed that in water and salt soluble proteins based on matrix similarity and genetic distance of straw, the lowest genetic distance was between genotypes 18 and 19 (0.32) and the highest genetic distance was between genotypes 16 and 8 (0.98). Finally, it can be concluded that there is a significant genetic diversity between the studied cultivars and this diversity can be used in plant breeding.