Among the abiotic stress, drought stress is one of the major threats to agricultural crop yield around the world. Selection and development of drought stress tolerant cultivars through effective screening method is one of the important strategies to overcome the drought associated problem. To evaluate the impact of drought stress we screened fifteen germplasm of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) and seeds were germinated at control, 10% and 20% concentration of polyethylene glycol (PEG6000) and allowed for growth twenty five days. Root length; shoot length, fresh weight, dry weight, Relative water content (RWC) and proline parameters were evaluated. The results revealed that the fresh weight, dry weight (mg) and relative water content (%) were reduced with increasing drought stress. The proline (µ.moles/fw) content was varied in different germplasm at different drought stress condition. The relative water content of the plants grown in control conditions was 93.29% and it reduced to 67.73% under stress conditions. The average proline content of all germplasm was estimated 17.39 μ moles gˉ1 fresh weight in controlled condition and under stress conditions it was noted 34.3 μ moles gˉ1 fresh weight. The results revealed that the variety NB4 showed best tolerance followed by NB6, NB7 and NB13.
