A novel parent selection strategy for the development of drought-tolerant cotton cultivars

Drought is a devastating factor for crop production worldwide. Therefore, an experiment was conducted to study genetics for some agro-physiological traits in cotton under drought stress. The 13 parental cotton genotypes along with their 30 F-1 hybrids were planted under normal and drought conditions. The mean performance of the genotypes was assessed through principal component and heat map analyses. The principal component analyses revealed 53.99 and 53.15% in the first two principal components of variability for normal and drought conditions, respectively. Heat map analysis revealed that three cotton genotypes i.e. FH-207 x NS-131, FH-207 x KZ-191 and S-15 x AA-703 attained higher values for all the traits except for canopy temperature under drought conditions. These crosses may proliferate to further filial generations to identify transgressive segregates for drought tolerance. The heritable differences of (F) over bar1 and mid-parent showed dominance and non-additive gene action under drought conditions. Heritable differences between (F) over bar1 and (P) over bar1 showed over dominance and partial dominance under drought conditions. Heritable differences between (F) over bar1 and (P) over bar2 indicated negative over dominance and partial dominance for all traits under drought conditions. Proline contents and the bolls per plant showed high heritability and genetic advance through additive gene action. Therefore, these two traits can be used as a means of selection in future breeding programmes of drought tolerance.