Identifying physiological traits associated with improved drought resistance in winter wheat

The association of specific target traits for drought resistance (early flowering, high accumulation of stem water soluble carbohydrate (WSC) reserves, presence of awns and high green flag-leaf area persistence) with yield performance under late-season drought was analyzed utilizing two doubled-haploid (DH) populations derived from crosses between Beaver × Soissons and Rialto × Spark in two seasons 2000/2001 and 2001/2002. The aim was to quantify associations between target traits and yield responses to drought, and to prioritize traits for drought resistance. Flowering time variation had a neutral effect on the absolute yield loss under drought, suggesting there may be a trade-off between water-saving behaviour in the shorter pre-flowering period with early flowering and a reduced capacity to access water associated with a smaller rooting system. The presence of awns also had a neutral effect on yield loss under drought amongst lines of the Beaver × Soissons population. The potential advantages of awns for increasing water-use efficiency and sensible heat transfer responsible for a cooler canopy appeared to be of less significance under moderate droughts in the UK than under severe droughts in other regions worldwide. The value of large stem soluble carbohydrate reserves for drought environments alone could not be confirmed in the UK environment. Stem WSC was positively associated with grain yield under both irrigation and drought. The genetic trait which showed the clearest correlation with the ability to maintain yield under drought was green flag-leaf area persistence. Averaged across years, the positive phenotypic correlation of this trait with yield under drought amongst DH lines of the Beaver × Soissons population (r = 0.49; p ≤ 0.001) indicated the potential use of this trait as a selection criterion for yield under drought. It is suggested that screens for this trait including marker-assisted selection would have value in future breeding programmes aimed at improving yields in high yielding, rainfed environments, but where drought can also be a problem, such as the UK.