One of the major impacts of climate change is increasing the occurrence of drought, leading to drastic reduction in yield in many crop plants. Foxtail millet is thought to be an excellent experimental model in studying abiotic stress tolerance due to its small genome, conserved genome structure, short life cycle and inbreeding nature. Present study was conducted with twenty foxtail millet genotypes with objective to identify tolerant genotypes to drought under pot culture. The drought imposed by withholding irrigation for fifteen days during flowering stage and various physiological parameters measures such as, chlorophyll fluorescence, chlorophyll meter reading, relative water content, chlorophyll stability index, excised leaf water loss were measured. Among the twenty genotypes of foxtail millet, the genotypes, ISe 27, PS 4, AP 4, ISe 138 and ISe 174 were showed better results. Based on drought tolerance associated traits, genotypes were grouped as drought tolerant genotypes which could be used for breeding programme to develop drought tolerant varieties or parents for developing mapping population to identify QTL associated with drought.
Key Words: Foxtail millet, Chlorophyll fluorescence, Relative water content, Drought