Screening for drought tolerance and genetic diversity analysis in landraces of lentil

Drought is one of the most challenging abiotic stresses limiting lentil (Lens culinaris Medikus) production in arid and semi-arid areas. Lentil is an annual food legume widely grown under rainfed environments where drought stress episodes occur frequently. Therefore, developing a rapid method for screening drought-tolerant genotypes for breeding programs is of great interest. A collection of 70 lentil landraces from Morocco, Italy, Greece and Turkey was evaluated for its drought characteristics under greenhouse conditions in Ghent, Belgium, using leaf Relative Water Content (RWC), Water Losing Rate (WLR) and Wilting Score (WS). These landraces were also analyzed using 19 simple sequence repeat (SSRs) DNA markers. Non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis Test was used to identify markers associated to the three parameters used to measure the landraces’ drought tolerance (RWC, WLR and WS). Significant associations between drought tolerance and SSR markers were observed. Results show that the described method of screening for drought tolerance is time- and resource-effective for food legumes breeding programs targeting drought tolerance