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. 2024 Jun 6;16(3):plae034.
doi: 10.1093/aobpla/plae034. eCollection 2024 Jun.

Morpho-physiological and yield traits for selection of drought tolerant Urochloa grass ecotypes

Celestine Anyango Ochola  1 , Mathew Pierro Ngugi  1 , Evans N Nyaboga  2 , Donald M G Njarui  3
Affiliations

Morpho-physiological and yield traits for selection of drought tolerant Urochloa grass ecotypes

Celestine Anyango Ochola et al. AoB Plants. .

Erratum in

Abstract

Drought has become more recurrent and causes a substantial decline in forage yields leading to strain on feed resources for livestock production. This has intensified the search for drought-tolerant forages to promote sustainable livestock production. The objective of this study was to identify drought-tolerant Urochloa grasses and to discern their morpho-physiological and yield traits to water stress as well as the relationship between these traits and indices of drought resistance. The results showed that the ecotypes, water regimes and their interaction significantly influenced all the studied morpho-physiological and yield traits. There was a significant decrease in plant height, number of leaves and tillers, dry matter yield, relative water content, photosystem II and efficiency of photosystem II with an increase in non-photochemical quenching. The principal component analysis revealed that the performance of Urochloa grass ecotypes was different under water sufficient (WS) and water deficit conditions. Drought tolerance indicators (mean productivity, geometric mean productivity, tolerance index and stress tolerance index) were most effective in identifying Urochloa ecotypes with high biomass production under both water deficient and WS conditions. Ecotypes K17, K7, Kisii, Busia and Kakamega were the most drought tolerant, Basilisk, K6, K10, K19 and Toledo were moderately tolerant whereas, CIAT6385, CIAT16449, K13, K5 and K9 were drought sensitive. The five drought-tolerant Urochloa ecotypes should be tested for sustainable biomass production under field conditions and used in breeding programmes to develop high-yielding drought-tolerant varieties.

Keywords: Ecotypes; Urochloa; forage; principal component analysis; water stress.

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Conflict of interest statement

None declared.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Correlation plot for morpho-physiological and yield traits under WD (A) and WS (B) conditions. NT, number of tillers; PH, plant height; NL, number of leaves; RL, root length; DMY, dry matter yield; FWT, fresh weight; RWC, relative water content; Phi2, photosystem II photochemistry; PhiNPQ, non-photochemical quenching, SPAD, relative chlorophyll content; Fv/Fm, efficiency of photosystem II.
Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Correlation plot for morpho-physiological and yield traits under WD (A) and WS (B) conditions. NT, number of tillers; PH, plant height; NL, number of leaves; RL, root length; DMY, dry matter yield; FWT, fresh weight; RWC, relative water content; Phi2, photosystem II photochemistry; PhiNPQ, non-photochemical quenching, SPAD, relative chlorophyll content; Fv/Fm, efficiency of photosystem II.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
PCA biplot illustrating contribution of all the studied traits under WS (A), WD (B) conditions and DTI and the distribution of the 35 Urochloa grass ecotypes (C). NT, number of tillers; PH, plant height; NL, number of leaves; RL, root length; DMY, dry matter yield; RWC, relative water content; Phi2, photosystem II photochemistry; PhiNPQ, non-photochemical quenching; SPAD, relative chlorophyll content; Fv/Fm, efficiency of photosystem II; MP, mean productivity; GMP, geometric mean productivity; TOL, tolerance index;YSI, yield stability index; YI, yield index; Yp, mean biomass yield under WS; Ys, mean biomass yield under WD, STI, stress tolerance index; SSI, tress susceptible index.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
A heatmap with dendogram showing hierarchical clustering of 35 urochloa grass ecotypes and 11 studied traits under WD conditions. NT, number of tillers; PH, plant height; NL, number of leaves; RL, root length, FWT, fresh weight; DMY, dry matter yield; RWC, relative water content; Phi2, photosystem II photochemistry; PhiNPQ, non-photochemical quenching, SPAD, relative chlorophyll content; Fv/Fm, efficiency of photosystem II.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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