Effect of drought stress on vegetative and reproductive growth of Bougainvillea species

Bougainvillea has key importance in a landscape, as its flowers come in broad range of colors and having protection quality as well. To provide maximum part of water to other important necessities of life, so it was more important to screen out drought tolerant genotype(s) of bougainvillea. To achieve this objective, six bougainvillea spp. Such as Spectabilis, Glabra red, Peruviana, Glabra Yellow, Dawn, and Rainbow gold were tested in Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) at different drought intensities (250ml, 200ml, 150ml, 100ml and 50ml) in ten inches plastic bags-250 ml water application was considered as control. Results indicates that higher number of shoots (10.8), leaves i.e. 47.8, maximum plant canopy i.e., 24.8cm, maximum plant height (48.9 cm), lengthiest such as 6.3 cm and widest i.e., 4.7 cm leaves and maximum branch length i.e. 11.7 cm were observed when treated with water level of 250ml, whereas, maximum number of flowers such as 11.7 were recorded for water application of 50ml. This study unveiled two-bougainvillea spp. (Dawn and Glabra Red) as the drought tolerant genotypes as they developed desired canopy, plant height, leaves and flowers even in intense drought.