TITLE:
Response of coleoptiles to water deficit: growth, turgor maintenance and osmotic adjustment in barley plants (Hordeum vulgare L.)
AUTHORS:
Águeda González, Luís Ayerbe
KEYWORDS:
Barley; Drought Tolerance;
Water Potential; Osmotic Potential; Grain Yield
JOURNAL NAME:
Agricultural Sciences,
Vol.2 No.3,
August
4,
2011
ABSTRACT: Cereal crop improvement programmes involve the analysis of a great number of lines every year; the availability of a simple, rapid method that would allow the identification of a trait in the early stages of plant development would facilitate the selection process. This work reports two experiments involving the germination of seeds in Petri dishes, performed to study the effect of water deficit on the growth of barley coleoptiles. In one experiment water stress was induced by allowing evaporation from the Petri dishes; in the other water stress was achieved by adding polyethylene glycol 6000.
The growth of the control coleoptiles was greater than that of the treatment coleoptiles in all cases, but with differences between the different genotypes. A significant correlation (P