Vol. 8, Issue 9, Part M (2024)

Water deficit disturbs various physiological and biochemical traits and has adverse bearing on plant growth and productivity. This study aims to explore linseed's response to drought stress and its impact on germination, growth, chlorophyll fluorescence, proline, carbohydrates, and protein profiling. It seeks to enhance understanding of linseed genotype diversity and its correlation with yield for future breeding efforts. In this study, around 32 genotypes were utilized for the evaluation of morphological and biochemical analysis for different traits under two environmental conditions viz., irrigated condition and water-stressed condition. Morphological characterization result indicates that germplasms like RLC-178, RLC-179, RLC-180, RFC-19-1, RLC-177 showed good performance under stressed condition as this germplasms does not show any reduction in all traits. Whereas R-2497, R-2596, R-2598, R-2728, R-3797, R-3986 showed reduction in all morphological trait as indicating susceptibility of germplasms for water-stressed condition.R-2596 (3.89 mg/g)exhibited minimal chlorophyll decreased, suggesting high tolerance, while R-3953 (12.33 mg/g), showed significant decreased, indicating susceptibility to water stress.RLC-177 (27 mg/g), R-2452 (26 mg/g), R-2323 (25 mg/g), R-3751 (25 mg/g), R-3549 ( mg/g)showed increased carbohydrate content under water stress, indicating tolerance. RFC-19-2 (25 mg/g), R-2272 (24 mg/g), R-2281 (12 mg/g), R-3785 (12 mg/g), and (R-3977 (11 mg/g) show decreased carbohydrate content under water stress, indicating susceptibility to water stress condition. R-2323 (11.89 µmole/gm) shows a high increased in proline content under stress condition. Protein profiling using SDS-PAGE gel electrophoresis showed total eight scorable bands were recorded under the irrigated condition and six scorable bands were obtained under stressed conditions. Overall, the research indicates low level genetic variation in the total seed protein profiles analyzed within linseed germplasms.