Improving Water use Efficiency Through Various Planting Techniques in Winter Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)

Abstract

C limate change is obvious and alarming to the future crop production. The assessment of its impact showed significant decline in yield of cereals (Ullah et al., 2019a) importantly wheat crop (Hussain et al., 2020) in arid and semi-arid regions. Many scientists proposed different adaptation strategies to combat climate change adverse effects. The replacement of conventional techniques in crop production to innovative was identified as resource efficient practices (Ullah et al., 2019b). These identified practices responded positively in studying the future impacts of climate in different scenarios. The role of water in adaptation is worth mentioning in addition to adapting crop production techniques (Ullah et al., 2017). How-Abstract | Water scarcity across the globe greatly emphasizing agriculture sector to adapt such practices that have more water use efficiency in the context of seasonal variability and climate change. Hence it is crucial to explore useful techniques in crop production that utilize less water without compromising yield, sacrificing income of the farming community and evidencing sustainability in production systems. Thus, a two years field study (during 2017-18 and 2018-19) was conducted at research area of Agronomic Research Station Khanewal, Punjab, Pakistan to compare the existing traditional winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) planting techniques (broadcast and drill) with the water efficient planting techniques (ridge and bed planting) to evaluate their water use efficiency and their economic feasibility. Results of this study revealed that sowing of wheat on ridges and beds gave higher productive tillers (384 ha -1 and 401 ha -1 , respectively), grains per spike (47 and 47, respectively), 1000-grains weight (43 and 44 g, respectively) and ultimately higher grain yield (4492 kg ha -1 and 4761 kg ha -1 , respectively) than broadcast and drill planting techniques (conventional techniques). Likewise, it was figured out that minimum water was required in wheat planted at ridge (47266 m 3 ha -1 ) and bed (40772 m 3 ha -1 ) techniques than with broadcast (65347 m 3 ha -1 ) and drill sown (57498 m 3 ha -1 ) wheat. Similarly, higher water use efficiency was recorded in ridge (0.10 kg/m 3 ) and bed (0.13 kg/m 3 ) sown wheat followed by the drill (0.08 kg/m 3 ) and broadcast (0.05 kg/m 3 ) methods. Moreover cost benefit ratio of ridge (1:1.15) and bed (1:1.25) planting techniques was higher than drill (1:0.93) and broadcast (1:0.44) techniques. In conclusion, it is recommended that wheat may be planted on ridges and raised bed to have more yield, high water use efficiency and sound financial return to farming community.

Performance Evaluation of Super Seeder for Wheat Sowing in Rice-Wheat Cropping System of Pakistan

“…Pre-tested and well-designed questionnaire was employed for field survey. According to the approach employed by Iqbal et al (2022) The meteorological data on rainfall and temperature was also collected and considered to explain the yield parameters.…”