Sunflower is an oilseed plant with good nutritional quality. Since the oil consumption per capita is high in Iran, it
is very important to pay attention to supply needed oil. Therefore, it is necessary to breed and introduce oilseed
sunflower cultivars with high and stable yield. Among the abiotic stresses, drought is the most effective factor
influencing the world of agriculture. Sunflower is relatively drought-tolerant, however its yield is still impacted
by drought stress conditions. In particular, drought stress during the reproductive stage has a pronounced negative
effect on sunflower yield, leading to a significant reduction in both oil content as well as oil production. Direct
selection for yield is unreliable due to the quantitative nature of this trait and its susceptibility to environmental
influences. As an alternative manner, the indirect selection i.e. selection through other traits and selection through
the indices, is used. By using the selection indices, it is possible to select based on several traits by overcoming
the unfavorable correlation between the traits. In this regard, in order to select genotypes with high yield under
drought stress, some selection indices such as Brim, Smith-Hazel, Robinson and Pesek-Baker were used to select
genotypes under investigated environmental conditions. Use of efficient selection indices can be useful in
identifying genotypes with high performance in different environmental conditions. Sunflower genotypes that
perform well under both normal and drought stress conditions can be utilized to develop promising hybrids.