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Pak. J. Bot., 48(1): 81-88, 2016.

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EVALUATION OF VARIOUS MORPHO-PHYSIOLOGICAL AND GROWTH TRAITS OF DUAL PURPOSE WHEAT UNDER EARLY SOWING DATES

FAZAL MUNSIF¹, M.ARIF¹, KAWSAR ALI^2*, M.J. KHAN³, SAID MUNIR⁴ AND F. RASUL⁵

Abstract: The use of wheat as dual purpose crop (for fodder and grain) is considered as promising agronomic management practice fulfilling human and animal need at same time. These expectations are largely found on positive experiences by growing wheat as dual purpose crop throughout the world. However, the validity of these results in Pakistan needs confirmation from field experiments under various sowing date and potential cultivars. The impact of cutting and sowing date on morphological and physiological traits of already existing wheat cultivars was evaluated at Agricultural Research Farm of The University of Agriculture, Peshawar Pakistan in winter 2010-2011 and 2011-2012. Three sowing dates i.e. 15^th October, 30^th October and 14^th November and six wheat cultivars (Ghaznavi-98, Fakhre-Sarhad (FS)-99, Ghaznavi-98, Saleem-2000, Uqab-2000 and Siran-2008) were compared for dual purpose wheat production during the course of experiment. Findings showed that significant reduction were recorded in nodes tiller^-1, plant height, spike weight and grains weight spike^-1 when sowing of wheat delayed from 15^th and 30^th October to 15^th November. Considerable variations were also noted in nodes tiller^-1, internodes length and leaf area index, plant height and lodging score among wheat cultivars but it was mainly due to their genetic characteristic not because of cutting treatment. It was observed that cutting caused 5.5, 12.1, 6.2, 4.1, 25.9, 7.1, 6.6% reduction in wheat leaf area, leaf area index, internode length, plant height, lodging score, spike weight and grains weight spike^-1 , respectively over non cut plots in both year of the experiment. Interestingly, no-significant change was noted in spike length and number of nodes tiller^-1 under cut and no cut plots. The conclusive findings suggested that optimum sowing date (15^th and 30^th October) for all wheat cultivars could be utilized as potential source of dual purpose wheat for substantial reduction of lodging without compromising on important morphological and physiological characteristics.

Key words: Dual purpose wheat, food security, forage production, land utilization and sowing dates.

1Department of Agronomy, University of Agriculture, Peshawar Pakistan
2Department of Agriculture, Abdul Wali Khan University, Mardan, Pakistan
3 Department of Soil and Environemntal Sciences, University of Agriculture, Peshawar, Pakistan
4 Institute of Hajj and Umrah Research, Umm-Al-Qura University, Makkah, Saudia Arabia
5 Dept. of Agronomy, University of Agriculture Faisalabad
*Corresponding author: kawsar@awkum.edu.pk