Effect of Supplementary Irrigation on Agronomical and Physiological Traits in Durum Wheat (Triticum durum Desf.) Genotypes

Nadjim Semcheddine,Miloud Hafsi

doi:10.5539/jas.v6n9p184

Abstract

Drought, one of the abiotic stresses, is the most significant factor restricting crop production in large agricultural fields of the world. Wheat is generally grown on arid-agricultural fields. Drought often causes serious problems in wheat production. Ten durum wheat (Triticum durum Desf.) genotypes were tested under rain-fed (T0) and three irrigated treatments (T1 = 50 mm at Booting stage, T2 = 50 mm at Booting and 15 mm at heading stages and T3 = 50 mm at Booting and 30 mm at heading stages) in semi-arid conditions of Eastern Algeria. Grain Yield, components of yield, heading evolution, leaf relative water content, leaf specific weight, grain filling rate and duration and chlorophyll content were measured. The irrigation treatments affect significantly all characters. Application of 50 mm of irrigation at booting stage increased significantly grain yield by 23%, compared to rain-fed treatment. Another supplementary irrigation of 15 or 30 mm, at heading, increased significantly grain yield by 45 and 61%, respectively. Stressed condition affects negatively thousand kernel weights (105%). In addition, combined analysis of variance showed high genetic variation for all parameters measured, excepted leaf relative water content and leaf specific weight, when measured at heading stage suggesting the possibility of selecting tolerant genotypes for drought tolerance under semi arid condition.

Highlights

Drought stress, which is the most serious environmental problem limiting crop production in rain-fed agriculture (Bahieldin et al, 2005), can severely impact plant growth and development, limit plant production and the crop performance (Shao et al, 2009)
At grain filling stage, grain yield was positively correlated with Relative Water Content (RWC) and Leaf Specific Weight (LSW)
From heading to late grain filling, our finding indicate that chlorophyll content has positive correlation with RWC at grain filling, LSW at grain filling, grain filling duration (GFD) and grain yield and was negatively correlated with; RWC at heading, LSW at heading, Grain filling rate (GFR) and HDD (Table 10)

Summary

Introduction

Drought stress, which is the most serious environmental problem limiting crop production in rain-fed agriculture (Bahieldin et al, 2005), can severely impact plant growth and development, limit plant production and the crop performance (Shao et al, 2009). In the semi-arid high plains of Algeria, drought is often a serious wheat production problem. The temperature regime in those parts of Algeria which receive adequate rainfall (300 mm) is reasonably suitable for wheat production. These areas generally lie north of latitude 34.5° N, along the Mediterranean coast. Even in the Sahara, with a hot sub-tropical desert climate (rainfall

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