Comparative Study On Drought Tolerance In The Four Types Of Wild Apricot

The water deficiency threatening the agricultural production and the eco-environment in the world,specially recently, it is very obvious that the effect of drought stress on plant growth and development, andthe productivity in arid and semi-arid region. Armeniaca belongs to the Prunoideae of Rosaceae in the planttaxonomy. Apricot have developed root systems and have strong adaptivity to drought ecologicalenvironment. There have some initial study on photosynthetic characteristics and water use efficiency ofPrunus sibirica, while there have few study on the water stress and the photo-physiology of wild apricot.This study, the field cultivated biennial seedlings of sweet kernel No1and No2, bitter kernel No1andNo2, the4types of wild apricot (Armeniaca vulgaris), which collected from Ili region of Xinjiang wereused for this experiment,26d of drought stress treatment were performed in order to investigate theadaptive traits of photosynthesis of wild apricot under drought stress conditions. The5th and26th days ofinterception of water, the photosynthetic rate, stomatal conductance, intercellular CO2concentration andthe transpiration rate were measured, and the water use efficiency was calculated, meanwhile the waterpotential, cell membrane permeability and the chlorophyll contents were determined. The results shows that,the fluctuation of the water potencial and the cell membrane permeability was smaller in the leaves ofdrought resistant types. the rangeability of net photosynthetic rate different between the types of wildapricot, the order of rangeability as: sweet kernel No1>sweet kernel No2>bitter kernel No1>Bitter kernelNo2. The decrease of net photosynthetic rate be resulted both from stomatal and non-stomatal factors inwild apricot, and the contribution of stomatal and non-stomatal to decrease in photosynthetic rate wasdifferent between the types of wild apricot. The changes of chlorophyll a/b ratio and the water useefficiency were correlated to the variability of net photosynthetic rate.