Exploiting Agronomic and Biochemical Traits to Develop Heat Resilient Cotton Cultivars under Climate Change Scenarios

The development of high-yielding heat-tolerant cotton cultivars harboring plastic phenotypes across warming climatic regions is prime objectives today’s breeding programs. We evaluated eight parents and 15 F1 hybrids under normal heat stress conditions. Agronomic biochemical characters were analyzed using standard least square, correlation, principal component analysis (PCA), hierarchical clustering. results explained a significant reduction in all traits except hydrogen peroxide contents, catalase, peroxidase activities with prominent increase stress. A positive correlation was observed among agronomic traits. POD found to have maximum CAT (0.947) minimum boll weight (0.050). PCA showed first two components accounting for 78.64% the total variation, 55.83% 22.80% respectively. Based on multivariate analyses methods 23 genotypes been placed 3 groups: tolerant (cluster-3), moderately (cluster-2), susceptible (cluster-1). In general perspective better performance supports idea hybrid adaptability environments. specific FH-458 × FH-313 cross performed best both conditions yield physiological Hence, generated information from present study would support breeders developing heat-resilient endure prevailing extreme environmental