The suitability of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) as a winter-sown grain crop was evaluated for the Merredin region (310 mm rainfall) in the south-western Australian cereal belt. Few data on performance of chickpea were available from southern Australia, but similarities of the Merredin climate with that of Aleppo in Syria, where chickpea has been grown for centuries, indicated its potential. The response of a desi-type early line of chickpea was studied in a time of sowing by density trial in 1982 and a time of sowing trial in 1983, by relating seed and biological yield to dry matter accumulation and distribution, phenological and morphological development. Seed yields averaged 1.20 t ha-1 over the two years, and was little affected by time of sowing or density over the normal sowing period, and confirmed early flowering as the basic ideotype for the region. Seed yield correlated poorly with harvest index, but highly with biological yield within, but not between years. Time to flowering was fairly constant, averaging 100 days after 1160�C days, and flowering stopped soon after maximum LAI was reached. Detailed observations in 1983 showed that the efficiency of formation of seed bearing pods from flowers increased from 38% for the earliest planting to 83% in the latest planting. The failure of early sown chickpea to exploit the longer growing season resulted from the high abortion rate of early flowers, probably caused by low spring temperatures. The 35% of pods aborted in late spring, in all sowing dates, indicates that water stress can be expected to limit chickpea yields, as in other cultivated species, in the region. Chickpea demonstrated good yield potential for the drier cereal belt on heavy-textured soils at Merredin, to which medics are adapted. The data indicate scope to increase yields by improving tolerance to cold during early flowering and support the concept of increasing seed yields by restricting the number of branches at higher densities, as found in a previous study.
Triticurn aestivum, bread wheat, spring wheat, uniculm effect, ideotype.
SUMMARYThe concept of the uniculm habit as an important feature of a wheat ideotype for a mediterranean environment was evaluated under field conditions. A uniculm plant produces a single shoot and when sown in a stand exemplifies a non-tjllering crop with a fixed density of shoots throughout the growing season. Yield and harvest index of normal tillering spring wheat was compared with that of the same crop surgically detillered throughout the growing season to a constant density of 2 shoots per plant. The use of a biculm, whilst retaining the uniculm principle of a fixed density of shoots throughout the growing season, permitted comparison on a single crop sowing at normal field density.The control plots followed the usual pattern of tillering for the region attaining a maximum of about 4.0 shoots per plant by early spring. Shoot number declined to 2.3 and 2.6 per plant by maturity in 1978 and 1979, respectively.
At a given matric potential, rates of uptake of water and rates of seed germination on a suction plate apparatus were increased by improving the degree of contact between liquid water and seed. The conclusion of Collis-George and Sands (1962) that small matric potentials, as such, influence the rate of seed germination is critically reviewed in the light of the present investigation. The rate of germination of seeds was not influenced by small pressure potentials, which like matric potentials are a non-osmotic component of the total water potential.
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