Impact of Hydrogel and Its Relationship to Yield, some of Its Components and Grain Quality of Bread Wheat Genotypes (Triticum aestivum L.)

Abstract

This study was conducted in two separate experiments, the first one was under conditions of irrigation water shortage and the second when irrigation water was sufficient to evaluate and determine the effect of Hydrogel on fifteen different genotypes of bread wheat and to identify the most superior varieties in terms of vegetative growth and yield of wheat, The grains of the genotypes were planted at the Sayada site - Agricultural Research and Experiment Station of the College of Agriculture - University of Kirkuk (longitude 44.42 0 east and latitude 35.16 0 north). For the season (2021-2022) using a randomized complete block design (R.C.B.D) with a split plot system, the two experiments included three sectors, and each sector included two main plots with addition of Hydrogel (A1) and without the addition of Hydrogel (A0), and each secondary plot contained (15) genotypes of different from soft bread wheat, the cultivars were planted in four lines with a length of (3) m, and the distance between one line and other was (0.25) m. The characteristics of the total number of tillers were studied. m-2, the height of the plant (cm), the area of the flag leaf (cm2), the number of days from sowing to 50% flowering (day), and the grain yield in a ton. and- The biological yield. A meta-analysis was carried out and the results were summarized by the superiority of irrigation water sufficiency over the lack of irrigation water, and all cultivars excelled when adding hydrogel over non adding hydrogel for all the studied characteristics. this explained that the effect of the hydrogel in storing and retaining water in a way that guarantees the actual need of the crop and achieves its sufficiency, As it was shown that the cultivar summer 2 was superior in terms of the number of spikes over all cultivars, with a rate of (431.4 spikes.m2-), and the cultivar Clar 1, according to the number of grains per spike, with a rate of (67.27) grains. spike-1, the Sulimany 2 variety excelled in terms of weight of 1000 grains, with an average of (57.43) g, and the Clar 1 variety excelled, with the highest average grain yield of (3.86) tons. h-1. And the lowest cultivar had the highest rate of the specific weight of the grain, which reached (80.35) kg. h-1 and Aras cultivar as a percentage of protein was (12.63) %.