Impact of potassium in alleviating water stress on wheat plants irrigated with treated water Some vegetative growth characteristics

Abstract

The study was conducted using plastic pots during the growing season 2020-2021 in private field crops at the Holy Karbala Governorate to study the effect of the quality of water, soil moisture and potassium levels on some growth parameters of wheat plant var. A.L. baraka. A factorial experiment was carried out using a completely randomized design (C.R.D.) with three replications, which included two types of irrigation water treated heavy water and soft water, three levels of field capacity, i.e., %, 50% and 100% and four levels of potassium, i.e., 0, 1000, 2000 and 3000 mg. L-1 The experiment included 72 experimental units. The results were statistically analyzed, and the means of treatments were compared using the least significant difference under the probability level 0.05. The following characteristics were measurements: plant height, number of leaf areas, dry weight of shoot and root systems. Results could be summarized as follows: Water quality had a statistical effect on the traits under study, as the treatment with treated heavy water gave the highest values of plant height, number of tillers, number of leaves, leaf area, root and shoots dry weights, which amounted to 70.21cm, 14.03leaf, 23.42cm2 , 6.24g, 1.76g respectively compared to soft water, which amounted to 69.17 cm, 3.52tiller, 13.24leaf, 22cm2 , 58, 5.94 and 1.68g. The addition of 100% of the field capacity value gave the highest averages of the following height, number of leaves, leaf area, root and shoots dry weights, which amounted to 80.80cm, 15.98leaves, 27.81cm2 , 7.69g and 2.15g sequentially. The addition of 3000 mg.L-1 of potassium gave the highest averages for the traits plant height, number of leaves, leaf area, shoot dry weight and root dry weight, where their averages were 73.11cm, 14.66 leaves, 25.11cm2 , 6.63g and 1.87g respectively. Some bi- and tr-interactions between studied factors showed a different effect on the studied characteristics. Keywords: Wheat plant, water quality, field capacity, potassium concentration.