Physiological Screening for Drought Tolerance Traits in Vegetable Amaranth (Amaranthus tricolor) Germplasm

Amaranth (Amaranthus tricolor), an underutilized climate smart crop, is highly nutritious and possesses diverse drought tolerance traits, making it ideal crop to thrive in a rapidly changing climate. Despite considerable studies on the growth physiology of plants subjected stress, precise trait phenotyping strategy for vegetable amaranth still not well documented. In this study, two screening trials were carried out 44 A. tricolor accessions order identify potential drought-tolerant germplasm discern their physiological responses stress. The findings revealed that change stem biomass was most likely main mechanism adaptation stress recovery, dark-adapted quantum yield (Fv/Fm) could be useful parameter identifying amaranth. Three indices: geometric mean productivity (GMP), (MP) index (STI) identified eight with stable performance across trials. significant genotypic differences observed several traits among indicate panel used study rich source genetic diversity breeding purposes traits.