Agro-management practices for sustainable wheat production under scarce water condition of arid climate

Abstract

Irrigation water is vital and most limiting input in arid agriculture. This study evaluates the late sown wheatcrop under various agro - management practices for enhancing the crop productivity in water scarce area .Results exhibited that better leaf water relations expressed in terms of an improvement in the leaf waterpotential, leaf osmotic potential, stomatal conductance and relative water content of flag leaf as well as higherrates of transpiration and net CO 2 assimilation were recorded with the planting technique of seed spreadingaugmented with furrows. This planting technique a lso expressed higher number of productive tillers, 1000 -grain weight and grain yield whereas lower soil penetration r esistance as compared to other plantingtreatments. The highest water use efficiency (WUE) was achieved with the irrigation regime of 80%(evapotranspiration) ETo while in case of planting techniques, s eed spreading augmented with furrowsexpressed the maximum values of WUE. The highest grain yield was recorded with flat sowing subjected to theirrigation equivalent to 100% reference evapotranspiration (100% ETo ) which was almost similar with seedspreading augmented with furrows at 80% ETo. Under deficit irriga tion regimes (80 and 60% ETo), s eedspreading augmented with furrows performed better than the other two planting techniques.