Genetic Behavior and Impact of Various Quantitative Traits on Oil Contents in Sunflower Under Waters Stress Conditions at Productive Phase (Report‪)‬

Introduction Sunflower as an oilseed crop was introduced in Pakistan in 1960. It ranks third after Soybean and palm oil in worldwide vegetable oil production. The soil and climatic conditions of the country are highly favorable for the production of sunflower. It is being cultivated on 937 thousand acres producing 956 thousand tons of seed and 249 thousand tons of oil (MINFAL 2006-07). Sunflower seed contains 40-48% oil, 20-27% protein (Nazir et al., 1994) and high percentage of poly-unsaturated fatty acids (60%) including oleic acid (16.0%) and linoleic acid (72.5%), which control cholesterol in blood (Satyabrata et al., 1988). Sunflower oil is considered as premium oil due to its light color, mild flavor and ability to withstand at high cooking temperatures. Furthermore, sunflower oil contains fat-soluble vitamins A, B, E and K, well for heart proteins (Evertt et al., 1987; Gossal et al., 1988). Sunflower is classified as a low to medium drought sensitive crop. It has been found that both magnitude and supply of water has a significant impact on achene and oil yield in sunflower (Krizmanic et al., 2003; Reddy et al., 2003; Iqbal et al., 2005). Although drought stress affects every developmental stage of sunflower, maximum reduction in yield was experienced when drought occurred during the reproductive stage (Reddy et al., 1998; Reddy et al., 2003; Vijay 2004). Moreover, water deficiency at a vegetative and reproductive growth phase may cause 40% and 61% yield reduction in sunflower, respectively (Iqbal 2004). Therefore, evaluation of good yielding sunflower varieties with high oil content tolerant to water deficit conditions at reproductive stage for local environment is directly needed.