الفهرس 
Tolerance of Pomegranate to Water Stress
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Abstract
Global warming, climate change and scarce of water resources have a wide negative impact on agriculture sector, pushing producers to think about more potential strategies such as using drought-tolerant species. This study was carried out on five pomegranate cultivars (Wonderful, Manfalouty, Acco, Assuity and 116) to evaluate their performance under two irrigation levels 100% of field capacity (control) and 30% of field capacity (water stress) during two consecutive seasons 2019 and 2020. The results indicated that water stress at 30% of field capacity significantly reduced shoot and root dry weight, leaf area, leaves chlorophyll content, stomatal conductance and transpiration rate. In contrast, WUE, proline content, total soluble sugars, total phenols and peroxidase activity have significantly increased in all studied pomegranate cultivars. Under water stress conditions, Manfalouty cultivar recorded the least reduction in leaf area, transpiration rate and stomatal conductance, and the highest values of shoot and root dry weight as well as WUE, accompanied with an increase in proline and total phenols content. Furthermore, Wonderful cultivar possessed the highest increase in leaves chlorophyll content during both seasons when compared to other cultivars. Also, Wonderful cultivar showed the lowest or no significant increase in peroxidase activity and this could be related to a genotype’s variable peroxidase activity potential in pomegranate cultivars under water stress. In terms of leaf anatomical measurements, Manfalouty cultivar showed the highest thickness of upper epidermis and leaves were characterized by a great thickness of palisade and spongy tissues under water stress. Moreover, it had the highest thickness of xylem tissue and lowest decrease in phloem tissue. The obtained results may indicate that, Manfalouty followed by Wonderful cultivars are more tolerant to water stress than the other cultivars investigated