Effects of Occurrence of Drought Stress in Maternal Environment on Cardinal Temperatures and Germination Responses of Carthamus Species

Safflower (Carthamustinctorius L.) is one of the oldest domesticated crops, mainly grown as an oilseed in the arid and semiarid regions of the world. This study was conducted to investigate the Cardinal temperatures and to identify the effects of occurrence of drought stress in maternal environment on seed germination aspects of some Carthamus species according to a completely randomized design in 2014. To accomplish this, seeds of 13 genotypes from C. tinctorius, C. palaestinus, C. oxyacanthus, C. glaucus and C. lanatus were used which had been harvested from plants grown at normal and drought stress conditions. Seeds were subjected to 9 fixed temperatures (5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40 and 45°C) for germination in the growth chamber according to a factorial experiment. Results showed that the effects of genotype, species, temperature, pretreatment drought stress and some of their interactions were significant for certain germination characteristics at 0.05% probability level. Significant reductions occurred in the germination rate of seeds at temperatures below 10°C and above 30°C. Although there were significant differences in percent of seed germination among species, seeds harvested from drought stressed plants were not significantly different from the ones harvested from non-stressed plants in terms of cardinal temperatures. Hence, it is more likely that cardinal temperatures will not cause difficulties in the case of inter-specific breeding programs for drought tolerant safflower cultivar development.