Water stress has become one of the foremost constraints to agricultural development, mostly in areas that are deficient in water. A field trial has been conducted to evaluate the performance of different twenty wheat genotypes under three stress treatments viz., control (T0) = normal watering, stress-1 (T1) = water stress from tillering up to maturity, and stress-2 (T2) = water stress from anthesis to maturity were used as treatments. The results revealed that a highly significant (p < 0.01) difference was observed among twenty wheat cultivars for morpho-physiological traits except for several tillers plant⁻¹, spikeletspike⁻¹, and relative water content. In the early days, 50% flowering was noted in Anmole-91 (64.33 days) under (T0), while Anmol-91 showed a relative decrease (RD-1) (−2.34 days) at days 50% flowering in (T1). The TJ-83 genotype showed an early response (−8.34 day) at days to 50% flowering under stress-2 (T2), but TD-I (−3.34) was observed to be relatively tolerant. Underwater stress from tillering to maturity (T1) SKD-1 was found more susceptible (−36.7 days) than other cultivars. Wheat cultivar Soghat-90 showed maximum RD-1 (−24.7) for grain yield plant⁻¹ in stress-1 (T1) from tillering to maturity. Anmole-91, NIA-Sarang, and TD-I observed minimum was (−6) in the same water stress for various traits. Therefore, the findings of present work revealed that the best performing genotypes can be recommended for effective cultivation in future breeding programs.

Background: Water stress is crucial factor limiting wheat seedling's, nutritional, growth parameters, and development, ultimately limited production. Objectives: The aim of present study was to assess the potential of water stress treatments such as under normal watering (T0), under polyethylene glycol (PEG-6000) at 0.5 MPa solution (T1), and under PEG 6000 at 0.75 MPa solution (T2) on quantitative wheat seeding traits such as shoot length (SL), root length (RL), shoot fresh weight (SFW), root fresh weight (RFW), shoot dry weight (SDW), and root dry weight (RDW), of five winter wheat cultivars and their ten advance (F2) lines, under In situ condition, result indicated that the maximum shoot length (SL) of wheat line TJ-83 × Sarsabz was 19.53 cm under PEG-6000 at 0.5 MPa treatment. Methods: The present study was performed under control condition at Nuclear Institute of Agriculture (NIA), Tandojam Pakistan, along with a completely block design with split-plot along with three replication. Results: The highest root length (RL) of wheat line TJ-83 × Sarsabz was noted by 26.60 cm under normal watering. The maximum shoot fresh weight (SFW) of wheat cultivar, NIA-Sarang was noted up to 1.62 g under normal watering. The root fresh weight (RFW) of TD-1 cultivar was significantly increased by 1.38 g under normal water condition. The shoot dry weight (SDW) of wheat line TJ-83 × Kiran-95 was dramatically increased by 1.44 g under PEG-6000 at 0.5 MPa treatment. Similarly, shoot dry weight (SDW) of wheat line TJ-83 × Sarsabz was noted by 1.44 g under normal water condition. The root dry weight (RDW) of wheat line TJ-83 × Kiran-95 was significantly increased by 1.26 g under PEG-6000 at 0.5 MPa treatment. Conclusion: Overall results revealed that wheat cultivar NIA-Sarang, wheat advance line, TJ-83 × Kiran-95, and TJ-83 × Sarsabz showed drought tolerance, which could be utilized in future breeding scheme of developing drought tolerant wheat genotypes.