The study was conducted at green house and laboratories of Agriculture Botany Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Suez Canal University, Ismailia governorate, Egypt during 2018/2019 to test rhizosphere growth promoting bacteria as known strategy to increase salinity tolerance of six genotypes of wheat namely; Line 404, Line 356, Line 420, Line432, Sakha 93 and Line 380 were grown under 3000 ppm and 5000 ppm of salinity. Four bacterial strains were used namely; Pseudomonas fluorescens NBRC 14160, Serratia liquefaciens ATCC 27592, Bacillus subtilis SBMP4 and Bacillus megaterium NBRC 15308. All the strains could be able to tolerate salinity levels up to 3% NaCl and produced indole acetic acid (IAA). The both strains Pseudomonas fluorescens NBRC 14160 and Bacillus megaterium NBRC 15308 were grow on NA media supplemented with 6% NaCl, and showed 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylate (ACC) deaminase activity and Pseudomonas fluorescens NBRC 14160 strain also fixed nitrogen. PCR results confirmed the previous results for both strains. Pseudomonas fluorescens NBRC 14160 and Bacillus megaterium NBRC 15308 were selected to study their reflection in vivo on wheat plants growth at different levels of salinity. The selected strains were able to improve plants growth under salinity stress conditions when compared with non-inoculated plants for all wheat genotypes especially sakha93 showed the highest mean values over rest genotypes under saline and non-saline conditions. Results of genetic parameters for studied traits showed that values of PCV were higher than GCV values for most studied traits. Germination percentage, shoot length and potassium content had high values of heritability and genetic advance, so these traits might use in selection of plant breeding programs for salinity tolerance.

Water limitation is a well-known problem for wheat plants. Lack of water affects their biomass and yield. This is the most conspicuous in case of crops causing severe uncertainty of agricultural productivity. Progress in breeding to improve drought tolerance has been limited by its high sensitivity to environmental factors, low heritability, and the complexity and size of wheat genome. In this study eight genotypes of bread wheat were used for screening them under three water regimes; control 100% Field Capacity (FC), 75% FC and 50% FC. Five drought resistance indices including Mean Productivity (MP), Tolerance Index (TOL), Drought Susceptibility index (DSI), Geometric Mean Productivity (MP) and Yield Stability Index (YSI) were calculated for each genotype based on grain yield under stress (50% FC) and normal (100% FC) conditions. Physiological parameters, chlorophyll content (SPAD values), proline accumulation and expression levels of drought related genes were analyzed in wheat plants at heading stage, comparing eight genotypes with different drought tolerance capacity. The imposed drought stress induced a decreasing of plant growth and chlorophyll content, a strong increase in proline and expression of drought related genes. The correlation coefficients showed that YSI, MP, DSI and GMP had the most desirable selection criteria for high yielding and drought tolerant genotypes. The development of molecular markers for physiological traits has made significant headway in recent years with the advancement of new technologies. Consequently, in our study the use of molecular markers; RAPD technique with 9 primers was detected 91 polymorphism alleles for the genotypes with 79.12% polymorphism. The most Polymorphic Information Content (PIC) value and polymorphism percentage was detected by OPA-07primer that showed the high score from bands 13 with polymorphism 69.23%. While, OPO-19 revealed low level from bands was 6 with percentage 83.33%. Also, OPA-02, OPA-04 and OPO-13 revealed 9 fragments with 77.78% polymorphism. While, primers OPB-07, OPB-10 and OPO-14 showed 11 bands with 81.82% polymorphism. The last primer revealed 12 bands with 75% polymorphism. Therefore, these recently developed techniques could be enable faster identification and characterization of drought-related gene(s).

The association of Infrared thermal imaging and specific target traits for drought tolerance (presence of awns, Normalized Difference Vegetative Index (NDVI), Relative Water Content (RWC), leaf area) with yield performance under three water regimes was analyzed utilizing wheat genotypes in two seasons (2012/2013 and 2013/2014). In this study eight genotypes of bread wheat were used for screening them under three water regimes; control 100% Field Capacity (FC), 75% FC and 50% FC. The presence of awns had a significant effect on yield loss under drought amongst wheat genotypes. Moreover, an infrared crop water stress index was calculated in the main water requirement stage. RWC was determined to give indication on the plant water status during the experiment. RWC ranged from 47.2% to 76.5% for water stress (50% FC). NDVI ranged from 0.31 (Maser 2) to 0.49 (H2) under water stress 50% FC. This result indicated that hybrid (H2) had the greatest green biomass and could be considered as a drought tolerant genotype. Temperatures of canopies can be used as indicators of stomatal closure in response to soil water deficit. It was found that thermal imaging can distinguish between stressed and non-stressed canopies, and even between deficit water treatments. Leaf temperature (T leaf) varied between water stress treatments and among the wheat genotypes within the same water treatment. Where, T leaf was ranged from 21.9 to 25.3°C for 50% FC treatment. Similar observations were noticed for the other water treatments. Indicating that the other physiological mechanism could be influenced on the behavior of genotypes due to water stress and subsequently leaf temperature was affected. Variation of the distribution of temperatures within canopies was found to be a reliable indicator of water stress. It could be concluded that combining thermal camera technology with physiological traits was sufficiently to predict wheat production under water stress.

The aim of the study was screening fourteen hybrids of maize under normal and drought stress. A field trial was carried out during two summer seasons on an experimental farm, Ismailia, Egypt. Growth, yield physiological traits have been estimated. Indices of drought resistance were calculated for each hybrid; mean productivity, drought susceptibility index, tolerance index, geometric mean productivity and yield stability index. Simple sequence repeat analysis of DNA (SSR) was applied to estimate the genetic differentiation among the hybrids. Results showed that corn yields were significantly reduced during drought conditions. Maize hybrids exhibited significant differences for physiological and quantitative traits; plant height, number of leaves, ear height, ear diameter, ear length, relative water content (RWC) and chlorophyll content. In this study, the hybrids divided successfully into four groups according to their drought tolerance and yield production by using drought resistance indices. One of these groups; S.C128, S.C162, S.C167 and S.C176 hybrids had the highest yield under both conditions and more adaptive under drought stress. The results of the SSR analysis showed that polymorphism % was ranged from 50 to 67% with an average 58.5%, while polymorphism information content (PIC) values were ranged from 0.32 to 0.57. Genetic similarity coefficient values were ranged from 0.625 to 1.000 with an average of 0.8125. The study concluded that SSR analysis and drought indices results are quite similar. Thermal images were more effective for selecting maize hybrids for drought stress. Consequently; we recommended it to use in plant breeding experiment.

Inroduction Each crop has different responses to environmental stresses such as drought. Major challenge for plant breeders is the improving of genetic resistance and different mechanisms for drought tolerance (Chaves et al., 2003). Faba bean is an important grain legume for protein (ranges from 20 to 40%) security of demographically expanding and climatically changing world (Bishnoi et al., 2012). It has important value in improving the soil fertility by fixing nitrogen (Bishnoi et al., 2018a). Faba bean is a diploid (2n=2x=12) autogamous annual plant with partial allogamy ranging from 20 to 80%. The degree of out crossing depends on Combining Ability, Heritability and Heterosis Estimates in Faba Bean (Vicia faba L.) under Two Water Regimes Soad A. Mahmoud (1) , Amal M. Abd EL-Mageed (2) and Enas S. Ibrahim (2)#