Résumé:
Actually,water deficit constitutes the main abiotic stress considerably limiting the productivity
of durum wheat (Triticum durum Desf.) in Algeria. The development of new wheat varieties
adapted to climate change, particularly tolerant to water stress, has become a strategic issue
for agricultural production in the coming decades. This work has two main parts. First, we
studied in semi-controlled conditions the response variability of six genotypes of durum
wheat (Triticum durum Desf.) subjected to three levels of water regime (100%, 70% and 40%
of the retention capacity). The plant material used is originally introduced and conducted in
randomized blocks with four repetitions. Morphophysiological traits were used to evaluate the
tolerance of genotypes to water stress such as: germination and growth parameters. The
second part of our work consisted of evaluating the agronomic performances of our genotypes
in greenhouses, based on pheno-morphological and agronomic characters. For the first study,
the results obtained show that the germination rate was relatively high, in addition to the
depressive effect on the height and growth of the plant, in particular; the number of roots, the
leaf area, and also the height of the plant, which are also observed in stressed plants compared
to controls. These effects are all the more important as the intensity and duration of stress are
high. For the greenhouse study, the results obtained show that the water deficit caused a drop
in the height of the stem, the length of the neck of the ear, and also a reduction in the length of
the last node, in addition to a decrease in both the number of seeds per ear and the weight of
thousand seeds. The study showed that all varieties have the same response to water stress,
but to varying degrees.
