Productivity of some barley cultivars as affected by supplemental irrigation under rainfed conditions

Abstract

Barley is widely cultivated in the northern coasts of Egypt and in the newly reclaimed lands. The goal of this study was response of some naked barley cultivars with high yield potential using supplemental irrigation under rain-fed conditions at Al-Kasr area, Marsa Matrouh, North-Western Coast of Egypt. The growth, yield, and drought-tolerance indices of Giza 129, Giza 130, and Giza 131, barley cultivars were estimated under rain-fed and supplemental irrigation regimes (SI0: rainfall only; SI1: two supplementally irrigations at tillering and heading stages; SI2: three supplementally irrigations at tillering, stem elongation, and heading stages). Agronomic traits including yield components and drought indices for the studied barley cultivars were assessed. The results displayed that Giza 131 gave a higher performance in most studied characters under rain-fed and irrigation regimes. Also, it produced the highest tolerance index (TOL), yield index (YI), harmonic mean (HM), stress susceptibility percentage index (SSPI), sensitivity drought index (SDI), mean productivity (MP), and geometric mean productivity (GMP). MP was positively correlated with YSI, GMP, DI, and HM. So, Giza 131 cultivar was identified as a drought-tolerant genotype. Moreover, the drought tolerance indices of TOL, YI, HM, SSPI, SDI, MP, and GMP are suitable for screening cultivars with high yields under stressed and non-stress conditions. The correlation analysis between the studied traits of barley indicated that highly significant positive correlation was obtained between number of spikes m-2 and grain yield. So, these traits are the most important components of the estimated grain yield of naked barley