Morpho-physiological Evaluation of Finger Millet (Eleusine coracana L. Gaertn.) Genotypes for Drought Tolerance

Finger millet (Eleusine coracana L. Gaertn.) is a nutritious and climate-resilient crop with a C4 type carbon fixation pathway. The present study was aimed to assess the drought tolerance capacities of twenty short medium-late duration finger millet genotypes under water stress (WS) for 15 days during reproductive stage to identify the traits and genotypes for drought tolerance using statistical analysis. The shoot length (16.74 %), leaf area (28.21 %), shoot dry weight (30.20 %), relative water content (32.70 %), membrane stability index (37.53 %), test weight (14.64 %), grain yield (36.48 %) and straw yield (31.34 %) were decreased and found sensitive to water stress, but the root length (by 13.45 %), root to shoot ratio by length (36.15 %) and proline (146.96 %) were increased. From the present investigation, among the 20 genotypes tested, KMR-204 and GPU-45 in short duration, ML-365, PR-202 and GPU-28 in medium duration, KMR-301 and L-5 in long duration showed identical performance for maximum number of traits under consideration. Hence, our results provide inputs to the breeders to select genotypes as parents and to design effective strategies in crop improvement programs.