Effect of Different Irrigation Intervals and Skipping on Growth, Yield and Water Use Efficiency on Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)

Abstract

Two field experiments were carried out for two consecutive winter seasons (2008/09-2009/010) in the Demonstrated Farm, Sudan University of Science and Technology, at Shambat to study the effect of different irrigation intervals and skipping on growth, yield, yield components and water use efficiency of wheat (Triticum aestivum L.). Wheat cultivar Condor was grown under different irrigation conditions in two experiments, the first experiment was: different irrigation intervals namely every 7, 10, 14, 21 and 28 days. While the second experiment was: skipping one- irrigation at different developmental stages namely seedling, tillering, booting, dough and ripening stage in addition to continuous irrigation every 10 days as control. The experimental design was randomized complete block design with four replications. The parameters study were: plant height, dry matter accumulation, number of plants/m2, number of tillers/plant, days to five leaf stages, days to 50% heading, days to maturity, number of spikes/m2, spikelets/spike, number of grains/spike, 1000-grain weight, grain and straw yield and water use efficiency. The results showed that there were highly significant differences in the studied parameters due to irrigation intervals, except for days to fifth leaf stage and harvest index in the first season and number of plant/m2 in second season, where the irrigation every 7 recorded higher values (slightly different from 10 days) than the others. On the other hand, skipping irrigation had significant effects on XI all tested parameters except plants/m2 in both seasons and plant height and dry matter accumulation at 45 days of age (booting stage) in the second season. Irrigation every 10 days (control) gave higher values for all parameters less at seedling and ripening stages than the other sensitive stages. Although, the results showed highly significant effect of the treatments on biomass, straw and grain yield, harvest index, water use efficiency and protein content. In general irrigation every 7-10 days (with less effect of skipping on seedling and ripening stages) gave the highest protein content, grain and straw yield and field water use efficiency.