Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Plant Biosystems, 2025 (SCI-Expanded)
Drought has affected agriculture and intensified water scarcity. The effect of two irrigation regimes was evaluated on 13 eggplant genotypes selected as diverging for several fruit/plant qualitative traits, yield and drought tolerance. Two commercial varieties commonly used by growers in Morocco were tested. The irrigation treatments consisted of two different conditions: (i) control irrigation (Tr-C) adopted by the grower; (ii) water shortage of 50% of the amount of this irrigation (Tr-50%). Results showed that reduced water supply significantly impacted growth and quality parameters of each genotype/variety (p < 0.001) between treatments, particularly, traits such as plant height, number of flowers and leaves. Non-significant differences between treatments were observed Fv/Fm, DI0/CS0 and ABS/CS0 ratios. In terms of relative water content (RWC), genotype C10 showed remarkable drought resilience, with only a 4.12% reduction. Water stress resulted in significant reductions in the number of fruits for C8 by 49.58% and yield per plant for the genotype B1 by 39.19%. Notably, genotypes C10 and C13 demonstrated significantly better performance compared to the other genotypes, yielding 1.48 and 1.53 kg/plant, respectively, while commercial varieties A and V produced 1.98 kg/plant and 1.86 kg/plant. These results provide valuable information for the selecting and breeding of tolerant eggplant genotypes under drought-prone environments.