Throughout germination, which represents the initial and crucial phase of the wheat life cycle, the plant is notably susceptible to the adverse effects of drought. The identification and selection of genotypes exhibiting heightened drought tolerance stand as pivotal strategies aimed at mitigating these effects. For the stated objective, this study sought to evaluate the responses of distinct wheat genotypes to diverse levels of drought stress encountered during the germination stage. The induction of drought stress was achieved using polyethylene glycol at varying concentrations, and the assessment was conducted through the application of multivariate analysis and machine learning algorithms. Statistical significance (p < 0.01) was observed in the differences among genotypes, stress levels, and their interaction. The ranking of genotypes based on tolerance indicators was evident through a principal component analysis and biplot graphs utilizing germination traits and stress tolerance indices. The drought responses of wheat genotypes were modeled using germination data. Predictions were then generated using four distinct machine learning techniques. An evaluation based on R-square, mean square error, and mean absolute deviation metrics indicated the superior performance of the elastic-net model in estimating germination speed, germination power, and water absorption capacity. Additionally, in assessing the criterion metrics, it was determined that the Gaussian processes classifier exhibited a better performance in estimating root length, while the extreme gradient boosting model demonstrated superior performance in estimating shoot length, fresh weight, and dry weight. The study’s findings underscore that drought tolerance, susceptibility levels, and parameter estimation for durum wheat and similar plants can be reliably and efficiently determined through the applied methods and analyses, offering a fast and cost-effective approach.

Technological characteristics (dry weight, dry volume, wet weight, wet volume, water absorption capacity, waterabsorption index, hydration coefficient, swelling capacity, swelling index, cooking time, number of destructedseeds after cooking) of 27 chickpea cultivars grown under natural conditions (without the use ofchemical/organic fertilizers) were investigated in this study. Except for water absorption index and hydrationcoefficients, effects of cultivars on investigated characteristics were found to be significant. The wet weight, wetvolume and water absorption capacity characteristics on PC1 explained 49.33% of total variation and swellingcapacity, swelling index and unit weight characteristics on PC2 explained 25.79% of total variation (bothexplaining 75.12% of total variation). Dry weight had highly significant positive correlations with wet weight(r=0.9776), wet volume (r=0.9653) and water absorption capacity (r=0.9317). In terms of investigatedcharacteristics, cultivars were clustered under three groups in scatter plot and dendrogram was composed ofthree sub-clusters under two main clusters.