Evaluation of the drought resistance of pea (<i>Pisum sativum</i> L.) from the VIR collection
Background. As a result of global warming, climate change is now taking place, increasing the frequency and duration of droughts. Therefore, the development of new varieties with an increased drought resistance and adaptation to certain environmental conditions is of primary importance. The aim of this work was to modify the express method of drought resistance evaluation in peas at an early stage of plant growth and development, and to apply this method to test 50 accessions from the VIR global collection. Materials and methods. Drought resistance studies involved garden pea accessions of different eco-geographic origin, which had been previously characterized in field tests in conditions of the Krasnodar Territory in 2017-2019. The roll-ups protocol was used for evaluating early drought resistance in the accessions. The stress intensity was modified by varying the concentration of sucrose in the solution used for growing of pea seedlings. To select an appropriate concentration, an osmotic pressure of 0.5 and 0.7 MPa was applied. As a result, the osmotic pressure of 0.5 MPa was chosen. The diagnostic criterion of the method is the radicle length index (RLI), that is, the ratio of the average radicle length of seedlings against a provocative background to the control values. Results. The osmotically active solution led to significant reduction in the radicle length of pea seedlings. The studied accessions exhibited considerable genetic variability for early drought tolerance, the RLI value varied from 0.28 to 0.88. Sources of high drought resistance during the period of seedling growth have been identified. The correlation analysis showed the absence of a reliable relationship between the RLI and the crop structure indicators (correlation coefficients from <i>r</i> = +0.17 to <i>r</i> = -0.24). Conclusion. By using the method of determining the relative drought tolerance at early stages of pea accessions development, one highly resistant (k-9333 from Morocco) and 10 resistant accessions (k-1495, k-9372, k-9401, k-9418, k-9733, k-9909, k-9934, k-9938, k-10072, and k-10116) have been identified.