Physiology, yield and quality of soybean as affected by drought stress

Drought stress is one of the most hazardous abiotic stresses increasingly affecting drought-sensitive crops like soybean. An experiment was conducted in Debrecen, Hungary in 2018 to investigate the influence of drought stress on physiology, yield and seed quality of three soybean cultivars different in maturity timing. Drought-stressed treatments of the three cultivars showed less normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and leaf area index (LAI) compared to fully-irrigated counterparts, whereas relative chlorophyll content (SPAD) did not measurably differ. Drought reduced the yield of the three cultivars, however, yield of middle maturity group cultivar was better than that of early maturity group cultivars, and the same conclusion was obtained from non-stressed treatments. Protein concentration changes were negligible.