Abstract
Water being an essential component for plant growth and development, its scarcity poses serious threat to crops around the world. Climate changes and global warming are increasing the temperature of earth hence becoming an ultimate cause of water scarcity. It is need of the day to use potential soil amendments that could increase the plants’ resistance under such situations. Biochar and gypsum were used in the present study to improve the water use efficiency (WUE) and growth of Abelmoschus esculentus L. Moench (Lady’s Finger). A 6 weeks experiment was conducted under greenhouse conditions. Stress treatments were applied after 30 days of sowing. Plant height, leaf area, photosynthesis, transpiration rate (Tr), stomatal conductance and WUE were determined weekly under stressed [60% field capacity (F.C.)] and non-stressed (100% F.C.) conditions. Stomatal conductance and Tr decreased and reached near to zero in stressed plants. Stressed plants also showed resistance to water stress upto 5 weeks and gradually perished at sixth week. On the other hand, WUE improved in stressed plants containing biochar and gypsum as compared to untreated plants. Biochar alone is a better strategy to promote plant growth and WUE specifically of A. esculentus, compared to its application in combination with gypsum.
Highlights
Drought is a long period of weather dryness due to lack of rainfall in any area that creates a serious imbalance of water and moisture deficiency for agriculture
Soil Analysis Before and after the application of treatments, the soil was analyzed for the physical and chemical parameters such as pH, electrical conductivity (EC), moisture content, soil texture and organic matter. These were determined for all the treatments including biochar and gypsum as well
The present study was made to check the potential of biochar along with gypsum in improving water use efficiency (WUE) under water stress conditions to study the effect of drought on growth parameters in A. esculentus L
Summary
Drought is a long period of weather dryness due to lack of rainfall in any area that creates a serious imbalance of water and moisture deficiency for agriculture. Climate change and global warming are two basic environmental issues that are caused by anthropogenic activities making agricultural crisis even more severe. High temperature and severe weather conditions are the causes of flash floods, drought and glacier melting. Due to these climatic changes, earth is becoming warmer and drier and resulting in water scarcity. Asian countries including Pakistan are agriculture based countries and their agricultural productivity and yield is adversely affected due to water shortage. This water crisis affects the productivity as well as yield of crops (Huaqi et al, 2002). In arid and semiarid regions, water stress is faced by plants in two conditions, either when water supply is reduced or the rate of transpiration may become very high than the normal rate (Tan and Weaver, 1997)
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