American Journal of Plant Sciences, 2013, 4, 999-1003
http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ajps.2013.45123 Published Online May 2013 (http://www.scirp.org/journal/ajps)
999
An Empirical Approach to Get the Vitality of a Genotype
to Water Stress Tolerance in Yield and Yield Contributing
Traits
Ijaz Rasool Noorka
1*
, Saba Tabasum
2
1
Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, University College of Agriculture, University of Sargodha, Sargodha, Pakistan;
2
Mo-
lecular and Cytogenetics Lab, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK.
Email:
*
ijazphd@yahoo.com
Received April 2
nd
, 2013; revised May 1
st
, 2013; accepted May 16
th
, 2013
Copyright © 2013 Ijaz Rasool Noorka, Saba Tabasum. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attri-
bution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly
cited.
ABSTRACT
Conventional methods of plant breeding and agronomic practices remained a successful tool to maintain the pace of
food production for centuries but due to changing climatic conditions and the challenges of 21
st
century like population
growth, pollution, declining biodiversity and food security have shaken the previous policies. This situation compelled
the agriculturist towards the judicious management of natural resources to combat the poverty, disasters and increased
food demands. The present study was initiated to check wheat varieties in two water provision conditions. The results
revealed that environmental stresses played negative role by minimizing the yield and yield contributing traits. However
the severity of water stress was depleted by some promising genotypes by showing minimum hazard effects and by
having capability to contribute to conserving biodiversity, ensuring sustainability, combating food insecurity and in-
creasing economic benefits. The minimum effect of moisture stress on grain yield was shown by genotypes C-518
(12.97%) while the genotype Shakar, Pari-73 and Uqab-2000 showed maximum decline percentage. The global warm-
ing and population explosion will further induce commodity shortage and law and order situation in the world. The
prevailing International tension can be cooled down by the provision of marshal aids by the developed countries to the
effected or threatened countries.
Keywords: Climate; Disaster; Water Stress; Poverty; Sustainable; Wheat
1. Introduction
Food security is a human right through the globe. The
pressure on fundamental natural resources, i.e. land, wa-
ter and labor witnessed last century in shrinkage of food,
fiber and fuel which will continue in the current century
due to burgeoning population [1]. Food security situation
in developing countries is crippling persistently due to
rough farming, economic, financial and water stresses [2].
Pakistan’s economy is fully dependent on agriculture and
depicted itself as the biggest employer.
The graph in next page presents twenty most important
food and agricultural commodities (ranked by value) pro-
duction in Pakistan [3]. Food security exists when all
people, at all times, have physical, social and economic
access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food which meets
peoples dietary needs and food preferences for an active
and healthy life [3].
In 1996 the World Food Summit (WFS) set the target
of “eradicating hunger in all countries, with an immedi-
ate view to reducing the number of undernourished peo-
ple to half their present level no later than 2015”. In 2000,
the Millennium Declaration (MD) promoted the target to
“halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people
who suffer from hunger” [3].
Conventional agriculture techniques remained a suc-
cessful tool to maintain the pace of food production for
centuries. In Pakistan from its existence most of agricul-
tural varietal development work was done to increase
yield by the use of minimum water [4,5]. Plant breeder’s
inputs to combat the challenges of 21
st
century, such as
population growth, climate change, pollution, declining bio-
iversity, quantity and quality and food security compelled d
*
Corresponding author.
Copyright © 2013 SciRes. AJPS