The present study aimed to investigate the tolerance of different durum wheat (Triticum turgidum ssp. durum Desf.
em. Musn) genotypes to drought stress at heading to maturity stage under the influence of drought alleviation treatments.
The field work was carried out at Fuka Research Station, Faculty of Desert and Environmental Agriculture, Alexandria
University, Matrouh Branch Egypt, in 2012/2013 and 2013/2014 winter seasons. The experimental design was split-plot,
with four replicates where the main plots included six treatments as follows: 1) Spraying with potassium, 2) Priming with
calcium chloride, 3) Bio-fertilization with HALEX® 4) Seed hydro-priming, 5) Sowing of dry seed (these five treatments
were subjected to drought by holding irrigation at postanthesis) and 6) Control (irrigation all season). The sub-plots
included the three durum wheat genotypes. The results revealed insignificant variation for applied treatments on all
studied characters, except for 100-grain weight, in the two seasons. Cultivars showed significant variations in LAI (at 80
DAS), dry weight of spikes (at 50 % heading and 30 days later) and number of grains spike-1 in the two seasons.
Interaction between drought alleviation treatments and cultivars was insignificant, for all studied characters in the two
seasons. Also, wheat plants, irrigated all season, gave the highest 100-grain weight (5.31 and 6.48 g) in the two seasons,
respectively. On the other hand, Sohag 3 was superior (0.23 and 0.25) to Marjawi (0.19 and 0.21) in LAI, in the two
seasons, respectively. In addition, Beni Suef 5 gave the highest significant dry weight of spikes and number of grains
spike -1 in the two seasons. Drought susceptibility index (DIS) values revealed that seed priming with CaCl2 and water
tolerated drought at postanthesis stage and gave comparable grain yield to that of control. Beni Suef 5 and Marjawi
showed higher tolerance to drought than Sohag 3.