Assessment of Drought Tolerance Ability of Selected Finger Millet Varieties in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Finger millet (Eleusine coracana (L.) Gaertnis is a highly nutritious cereal crop widely cultivated in Sri Lanka. Drought is a major abiotic stress which leads to limit plant’s growth and productivity. Two cultivated finger millet varieties (Rawana and Oshada) and three promising accessions (ACC: 7090, ACC: 7088, and ACC: 12415) were screened in a poly-house for drought tolerance using morpho-physiological traits and assessed using 5 selected Simple Sequence Repeat (SSR) markers (UGEP3, UGEP10, UGEP24, UGEP60, and UGEP78). Drought response was assessed using 9 morpho-physiological parameters. Through parallel analysis with control plants, it indicated that the variety Oshada performed effectively under drought stress compared to the other genotypes while Rawana indicated more sensitiveness to water withholding. DNA from each finger millet genotypes was amplified using selected SSR markers separately. Even though all five selected SSR markers exhibited comparatively higher polymorphism among the finger millet genotypes in previous studies, none of the markers showed the presence of polymorphism in the narrow genetic variation among the studied five genotypes. Interrelationships among the different agronomic traits measured were studied using Principal Component Analysis (PCA). PCA revealed that shoot dry weight (SDW), shoot fresh weight (SFW), shoot length (SL) and root dry weight (RDW) have contributed to the two principal components collectively. Hence, these traits can be effectively used in breeding programmes to generate variability. Furthermore, studies should be conducted with a greater number of SSR markers in order to have an in-depth assessment of genetic variability in the cultivated finger millet genotypes.