Effect of Water Stress on Fiber Quality Traits of Cotton Hybrids and Their Parents

Abstract

Crop growth and yield are influenced by plant genetic factors as well as environmental factors such as weather conditions, water availability, and soil conditions. Plant water is one of the most important and readily manageable variables for producing a profitable crop. Stresses involving water deficiencies will adversely affect cell turgidity, resulting in reduced crop production. For this experiment was carried out under field conditions as a split block design (SBD) with two blocks, one was well watered and to the other, water stress was applied, with three replications in each block. Cotton fiber quality is being deteriorated due to water stress and affects the fiber length, strength and elongation. All these properties of fiber have also a significant influence on yarn characteristics and thus the yarn quality. The objective of this study was to evaluate the potential of hybrids by comparing them with parents for fiber quality characteristics under drought stress conditions. In present results hybrid G.Cot.16× H-1353/10 and H-1353/10×G.Cot.16 shows less reduction in different fiber quality characters in comparison of other hybrids under stress condition. Therefore, results indicate that under stress different fiber quality characters such as 2.5% span length (mm), uniformity ratio (%), fibre fineness (micronaire), maturity coefficient, fibre strength (g tex^-1), short fiber index (SFI) and elongation (%) were significantly different amongst hybrids and parents which is usual. The interaction of genotypes with growing condition was found not significant.