WATER USE EFFICIENCY, GROWTH AND YIELD OF WHEAT CULTIVATED UNDER COMPETITION WITH Setaria

Abstract

Understanding the critical period of weed competition is indispensable in the development of an effective weed management program in field crops. Current experiment was planned to evaluate the critical growth period ofSetaria and level of yield losses associated with delay in weeding in rain-fed drip irrigated wheat production system of Saudi Arabia. Field experiment was conducted to evaluate the effect of weeding interval (07-21, 14-28, 21-35, 28-42 and 35-49 days after sowing) and drought stress (75% and 50% of field capacity) on Setaria growth, wheat yield and water use efficiency. Season long weedy check and wellwatered (100% FC) plots were also maintained for comparison. Weeding interval and drought stress significantly (p ≤ 0.05) affected the growth and yield of Setaria and wheat. Drought stress from 75% to 50% FC resulted in reductions of 29-40% in Setaria height, 14-27% in Setaria density and 11-26% in Setaria dry biomass. All weeding intervals except 35-49 DAS significantly suppressedSetaria growth as compared with control. Delay in weeding increased weed-crop competition interval and reduced wheat yield and yield contributors. Therefore, the lowest yield of 1836 kg ha-1 was attained for weeding interval of 35-49 DAS at 50% FC. Water use efficiency and harvest index increased with decreasing FC levels but reduced with delay in weeding. Correlation analysis predicted negative association ofSetariadensity with wheat yield and yield contributors and the highest negative association was for harvest index (-0.913) and water use efficiency (-0.614). Early management of Setaria is imperative for successful wheat production otherwise yield losses are beyond economical limits.

Water Deficit Irrigation and Nitrogen Response of Sudan Grass under Arid Land Drip Irrigation Conditions

“…Water productivity in our experiment was 2.4–7.8 kg ha −1 mm −1 for dry and fresh biomass accumulation respectively. Multiple factors contribute, such as soil type and water‐holding capacity, plant available moisture content, tillage practice and amount of residues in soil, climatic conditions, rainfall, crop physiological stage, time to maturity, soil fertility level and competition for weeds and insects (Bi et al, ; Ihsan et al ., , : Alghabari et al, ). Greater improvement in water productivity for forages has been reported by scheduling irrigation at plant critical growth stages (Tolk and Howell, ).…”

“…Nitrogen content was determined by micro‐Kjeldahl digestion followed by ammonia distillation, and was transformed to grain protein using a multiplication factor of 6.25 (Association of Official Analytical Chemists (AOAC), ). The water productivity (kg ha −1 mm −1 ) of leaf, stem and whole plant was measured by dividing accumulated biomass by the total amount of applied water (Ihsan et al, ).…”

Gene Mining for Proline Based Signaling Proteins in Cell Wall of Arabidopsis thaliana

“…In plants, GRPs related genes are regulated during developmental stages and their expression varies in plant tissues (Yan et al, 2015 ). In different genera of plants, the expression of such genes is controlled by biotic and abiotic stresses (Ahmad et al, 2014 ; Alghabari et al, 2015 , 2016 ; Ihsan et al, 2015 ; Yan et al, 2015 ). In plants, the categorization of GRPs is based on the semi-repetitive glycine rich motifs (Sachetto-Martins et al, 2000 ).…”

Investigating drought tolerance potential of different Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) varieties under reduced irrigation level

“…Maximum plant height was noticed in Aas-2011 (99.60 cm) followed ARRI-2011(95.46 cm), Fareed-2006(93.53 cm), Faisalabad-2008 and lowest in Millat-2011 (85.90 cm). Different wheat genotypes showed different plant height and severely affected when drought occurred at any stage (Ihsan et al, 2015).…”