Premise In crop breeding programs, breeders use yield performance in both optimal and stressful environments as a key indicator for screening the most tolerant genotypes. During the past four decades, several yield‐based indices have been suggested for evaluating stress tolerance in crops. Despite the well‐established use of these indices in agronomy and plant breeding, a user‐friendly software that would provide access to these methods is still lacking. Methods and Results The Plant Abiotic Stress Index Calculator ( i PASTIC ) is an online program based on JavaScript and R that calculates common stress tolerance and susceptibility indices for various crop traits including the tolerance index ( TOL ), relative stress index ( RSI ), mean productivity ( MP ), harmonic mean ( HM ), yield stability index ( YSI ), geometric mean productivity ( GMP ), stress susceptibility index ( SSI ), stress tolerance index ( STI ), and yield index ( YI ). Along with these indices, this easily accessible tool can also calculate their ranking patterns, estimate the relative frequency for each index, and create heat maps based on Pearsonʼs and Spearmanʼs rank‐order correlation analyses. In addition, it can also render three‐dimensional plots based on both yield performances and each index to separate entry genotypes into Fernandezʼs groups (A, B, C, and D), and perform principal component analysis. The accuracy of the results calculated from our software was tested using two different data sets obtained from previous experiments testing the salinity and drought stress in wheat genotypes, respectively. Conclusions i PASTIC can be widely used in agronomy and plant breeding programs as a user‐friendly interface for agronomists and breeders dealing with large volumes of data. The software is available at https://mohsenyousefian.com/ipastic/ .

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Abstract:The taxonomic and phylogenetic relationships within the genus Artemisia s.l. (Asteraceae) are controversial, and it has been considered 1 to 8 different genera. This work re-investigated the phylogenetic relationships in Artemisia using nuclear ribosomal (ITS ) and chloroplast psbA-trnH DNA sequences using three sections of Artemisia, Dracunculus, and Serphidium. Three phylogenetic trees were conducted separately on the basis of ITS, psbA-trnH and combined sequences using maximum parsimony. The results showed that the three sections were clearly separated from each other, and that the heterogamous Dracunculus and Artemisia are closely related to each other than either to homogamous Serphidium. This may suggest the taxonomic importance of capitulum morphology in Artemisia s.l. Our data also cast doubt on the use of cytogenetic similarity e.g., basic chromosome number in grouping Serphidium and Artemisia s.s. Furthermore, AMOVA analysis showed a higher level of ITS (55.29%) and combined ITS+cppsbA-trnH (55.63%) variations among sections. This provides further evidence for separation of these three sections and supports the phylogenetic results. The higher ITS nucleotide differences detected in Artemisia (30.4737) compared to very low value in Dracunculus (2.3333) and Serphidium (1.23077) may propose that the Artemisia comprises of several incipient sections. This supports the previous suggestion that Artemisia is a complex group.

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