Evaluation on drought resistance of Elytrigria intermedium, E.elongata and their hybrids

The principal components and membership functions analysis methods were used to evaluated the he drought resistance of three varieties in Elytrigia genus (Elytrigria intermedium, E.elongata and their hybrids) by measuring relative water content, proline, chlorophyll, protein and malonaldehyde content of the shoots in this study. The results of this study showed that the 5 indexes could be classified into 3 kinds of independent comprehensive groups. The comprehensive value of drought tolerance for the hybrid of E.intermedium E.elongata was 0.529, and that of E.elongata E.intermedium was 0.702; however, the comprehensive values of drought tolerance of E.intermedium and E.elongata were 0.308 and 0.191 respectively. Drought tolerance of the hybrids was obviously stronger than that of their parents, and the drought tolerance of the hybrid between E.elongata E.intermedium was the best.