study of root and shoot characteristics in reaction to drought stress in chickpea (cicer arietinum l.)

drought is the main constraint limiting chickpea productivity which makes a considerable difference between the potential and actual yield. in order to evaluate the effect of drought stress on different morpho-physiological characteristics of chickpea, four distinct genotypes were studied in three sampling times (pre-stress, stress and recovery) with three replications. as the results implicated, it is supposed that the tolerance or the sensitivity to drought is determined by the devotion of photosynthetic assimilates to different organs of plant during stress period and the misappropriation of plant assimilate to shoot parts is a reason of sensitiveness e.g. in mcc759. it assumed that increasing the ratio of root dry weight to total dry weight (r/t) under stress condition leads to drought tolerance in icc4958 and mcc696 due to reduction of water loss through aerial parts.