Introduction

In order to evaluate drought tolerance in bread wheat genotypes an experiment was conducted in a randomized complete block design with three replications under rainfed and irrigated conditions during 2012-2013 growing season. Drought stress significantly increased relative water protection (RWP), water saturation deficit (WSD), initial water content (IWC), leaf water content (LWC) and excised leaf water retention (ELWR), while decreased leaf water Loss (LWL), relative water content (RWC) and excised leaf water loss (ELWL). Principal component analysis (PCA) showed that integrated selection index (ISI) was correlated with relative water content (RWC), water saturation deficit (WSD), initial water content (IWC), leaf water content (LWC), stress yield (Ys) and yield potential (Yp) indicating that ISI was able to distinguish group A genotypes (drought tolerant with high grain yield under rainfed and irrigated conditions). Screening drought tolerant genotypes using mean rank, standard deviation of ranks and rank sum (RS), discriminated genotypes 9, 3, 12 and 2 as the most drought tolerant.