Water status in a plant is highly sensitive to water stress and therefore is dominant in determining plant responses to stress.Leaf RWC decreased under water stress, but its effects were sig-nificantly dramatic only under the 7% PEG treatment. The highest RWC values (62–67%) were observed in the 12/cultivar and 14/cul-tivar plants after 14 days, when compared with ungrafted plan tvalues (34%) (P < 0.05).