Abstract
Compared with other cereals, rye (Secale cereale L.) has traits that contribute to superior drought tolerance, thus making it a suitable alternative under intensifying droughts related to climate change. The distributions of these traits across a range of varieties and their relationships with yield potential have yet to be fully elucidated. Therefore, the sensitivity of 20 varieties, which differ in origin and age, to drought stress between the second half of stem elongation and the beginning of grain filling was analyzed. Potted plants were exposed to drought on an automated phenotyping platform, enabling accurate simulation of water loss for all varieties. Soil moisture was reduced to 30% of the soil water capacity, followed by rewetting. Although traditional varieties exhibited greater stability of key yield components under drought stress, modern varieties achieved higher absolute yields under both drought and well-watered conditions. Therefore, traditional varieties cannot replace modern varieties but remain valuable donors of drought resistance traits.
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The research was financially supported by the AdAgriF – Advanced methods of greenhouse gases emission reduction and sequestration in agriculture and forest landscape for climate change mitigation (CZ.02.01.01/00/22_008/0004635) and PERUN TAČR SS02030040 – Prediction, Evaluation and Research for Understanding National sensitivity and impacts of drought and climate change for Czechia.
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Supplementary Information
The Supplementary Information provides additional information on the rye varieties used (Supplementary Table S1), applications of fertilizers and treatments for pests and diseases (Supplementary Table S2), input data for the aridity index calculation (Supplementary Table S3), the results of Tukey’s HSD test of two-way ANOVA presented in Figs. 2, 3 and 4 (Supplementary Table S4) and the courses of meteorological variables recorded in the vegetation hall of Mendel University in Brno and in the greenhouse of PSI Drásov (Supplementary Fig. S1, S2).
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Hlaváčová, M., Klem, K., Pytela, J. et al. Traditional rye varieties exhibit drought tolerance traits but maintain lower yields than modern varieties under drought stress. Sci Rep (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-51544-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-51544-5
