Identification of growth stage specific watering thresholds for drought screening in Solanum aethiopicum Shum
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Date
2020
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Scientific Reports
Abstract
Effective phenotyping for drought resistance is a pre-requisite for identification of modest crop
varieties for farmers. For neglected and underutilized crops such as Solanum aethiopicum Shum
group, no drought screening protocol based on rigorous iterations has been documented. A split-plot
nested treatment structure was arranged in an experiment to identify growth stage-specific watering
thresholds for this crop. Three plant growth stages (main plot; seedling, vegetative and flowering),
watering regime at plant growth stage (2 regimes; well-watered and drought stressed) and day since
last watering at plant growth stage were evaluated for soil moisture content (SMC), leaf wilting
score (LWS), number of green leaves per plant (LPP) and leaf blade width (LBW). Highly significant
differences (p < 0.001) were found at the different plant growth stages, watering regime (WR) within
plant growth stage, and day within WR and plant growth stage. Under drought stress treatment, SMC
declined exponentially at each stage. The earliest leaf wilting, reduction in LPP and LBW were generally
observed at flowering followed by vegetative and slowest at the seedling stage. For future effective
drought phenotyping studies in S. aethiopicum Shum and related crops, we recommend setting
minimum drought stress treatments below 18% SMC at which the LWS is ≥2 at the vegetative.
Description
Keywords
Growth stage, Watering thresholds, Drought screening, Solanum aethiopicum Shum
Citation
Nakanwagi, M. J., Sseremba, G., Kabod, N. P., Masanza, M., & Kizito, E. B. (2020). Identification of growth stage-specific watering thresholds for drought screening in Solanum aethiopicum Shum. Scientific Reports, 10(1), 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-58035-1