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EFFECT OF WATER STRESS ON YIELD AND YIELD COMPONENTS OF WHEAT (TRITICUM AESTIVUM L.) VARIETIES

AMEER AHMED MIRBAHAR^1,2*, G.S. MARKHAND¹, A.R. MAHAR¹, SAEED AKHTER ABRO³ AND NISAR AHMED KANHAR

Abstract: Experiments were carried out to study the effect of different water stresses applied at different crop development stages on the yield and yield components of 25 wheat varieties. In a complete randomized block design, replicated 4 times, the 5 water stress treatments i.e. T1 (control), T2 (post flowering drought), T3 (Pre-flowering drought), T4 (Tillering stage drought) and T5 (terminal drought) were applied.  Water stress significantly reduced the plant height, spike length, spikelets per spike, grains per spike and 1000grain weight of all 25 wheat varieties.  The highest reduction in all parameters was found in T5, while T2 and T3 affected the 1000 grain weight significantly. The varieties Sarsabz and Kiran-95 showed significantly good performance than other wheat varieties in control as well as at terminal drought stress.   

¹Department of Botany, Shah Abdul Latif University, Khairpur, Sindh, Pakistan

²Plant Tissue Culture and Biotechnology Division, HEJ, Research Institute of Chemistry, University of Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan

³Institute of Botany, University of Sindh, Jamshoro, Sindh, Pakistan.

⁴Department of Microbiology, Shah Abdul Latif University, Khairpur, Sindh, Pakistan

Corresponding author E-mail: amir_salu@yahoo.com