A New Laboratory Technique for Creating Water Stress

Abstract

A precise and accurate knowledge of the effects of plant water stress is crucial to framing strategies for improving agricultural productivity in regions of agricultural water (water required for agricultural and allied operations such as field preparation, seeding, irrigation, drainage, livestock production, and dairying) shortage. Success would depend upon the reliability, precision, and accuracy of the techniques used for creating water stress. This paper reports a simple, inexpensive, reproducible, and eco-friendly laboratory technique that essentially consists of a specially designed potometer for creating plant water stress. In this technique, the mode of step-by-step root-zone water stress development resembles in situ field water deficit, exhibiting parallel physiological responses to stress and, at the same time, it takes care of the anomalies, deficiencies, and difficulties generally inherent in other techniques of creating water stress at the whole-plant level. This new technique is superior to the other available ones being used by researchers working for enhancing crop productivity under deficit irrigation and dryland agriculture.