Drought tolerant Species selection measuring water potential and Drought resistant index

Urban greenery in arid regions is currently massively unsustainable from a water consumption standpoint, and even more water is needed as urban greenspaces expand. Water shortages have stopped acceptable urban forestry growth. Most of the cultivated woody species in the Isfahan landscape have a low leaf water potential. Two species are common in Isfashan and replacing these species with other, lower water consumption species would provide more water for developing the landscape. To select species with the desired advantages from those that are cultivated in the Isfahan landscape, 16 species are compared in an experiment alongside three species new to the Isfahan urban landscape. The experiment used random factorial-split-split-plots with 5 replicates. Two soil types and five irrigation regimes were applied to these species cultivated in 20 Li plastic pots under drip irrigation. To quantify the drought resistance of each species, water potential (Ψ) was measured using a portable pressure chamber. To evaluate each species’ resistance to drought, the survival rate and Ψ were used to produce an Index of Drought Tolerances Species (IDTS). The IDTS has grouped the species into 5 sets: 1-high water consuming species (IDTS<10); 2- low water consuming species (IDTS 10-15); 3-normal water needed species (IDTS 15-20); 4-drought resistant species (IDTS 20-25) and 5-drought tolerant species (IDTS >25). According to IDTS, Salix and Populous spp is a high water consuming species; Platanus and Albizia are low water consuming species and Quercus plus Olea can be considered as drought tolerant species in the Isfahan climate under cultivation and irrigation conditions. The information has also been classified using a denderogram method as well. The cluster analysis of the species have classified them into a similar grouping.t,