Development of Best Screening Method at Seedling Stage Under Drought Stress for Brassica Napus L.

Drought stress is the most crucial factor among different abiotic stresses that limits crop production and its growth worldwide than any other stress. Screening of available germplasm is the basic tool for plant breeding. But unfortunately, there is no well-developed screening method of brassica. For this purpose, ten accessions of Brassica napus were grown in hydroponics and in vitro culture. For hydroponics, seeds of each accession were sown in polythene bags Fifteen days after sowing, seedlings were transplanted to the hydroponics at three drought stress levels T0= 0 (control), T1= 9% and T2= 18% of polyethylene glycol. Data were recorded on various seedling parameters after 15 days of transplantation. For in vitro culture seeds were grown in MS zero media and explants were used for callus culture. Three drought stress treatments of polyethylene glycol were applied which were used in previous experiment. Various drought tolerant related characters were measured after 21 days of callus formation. Recorded data of both experiments were subjected to analysis of variance and multiple comparison test. From this study it was concluded that most of the traits showed highly significant differences among the accessions in hydroponic than in in vitro culture. So, this study is very helpful in the next breeding program for the screening of brassica lines under drought stress.