Manuscript Abstract

SIGNIFICANCE OF PARTIAL ROOT ZONE DRYING AND MULCHES FOR WATER SAVING AND WEED SUPPRESSION IN WHEAT
S. Ahmad, M. A. S. Raza, M. F. Saleem, R. Iqbal, M. S. Zaheer, I. Haider, M. U. Aslam, M. Ali, I. H. Khan

1University College of Agriculture & Environmental Sciences, Department of Agronomy, The Islamia University of Bahawalpur, Bahawalpur, Pakistan; 2Department of Agronomy, University of Agriculture Faisalabad, Pakistan
3University College of Agriculture & Environmental Sciences, Department of Soil Science, The Islamia University of Bahawalpur, Bahawalpur, Pakistan; 4Department of Agronomy, Nanjing Agricultural University, China
5Agriculture (Extension) Department Punjab, Markaz Chounawala, Bahawalpur, Pakistan

Corresponding Author: mfsuaf@yahoo.com
Page Number(s): 154-162
Published Online First: January 02, 2020
Publication Date: January 02, 2020
ABSTRACT

One of the main negative effects of climate change is the increasing scarcity of water worldwide. Wheat is the second major staple food of the world and drought is the main factor affecting its production. In order to ensure food security, there is need to adopt easy and economic techniques for increasing crop production under limited water resources. Two of the effective techniques are; use of ground covers and partial root zone drying (PRD). Experiments were comprised of two irrigation methods (I1 = irrigation on both sides of roots and I2 = irrigation to only one side of root as alternate irrigation) and four ground covers (M0 = open ground without any cover, M1 = black plastic cover, M2 = wheat straw cover and M4 = cotton sticks cover). Results revealed that more spike length, number of spikelets and grains were found in full irrigation treatment. While water use efficiency and grain nutrient (NPK) contents were more in PRD. All soil covers suppress the weeds and significantly influenced the yield attributes as well as the grain nutrient contents. However, black plastic cover performed the best. It was concluded that joint use of both techniques was more effective than their sole application and combination of PRD with black plastic mulch performed the best than rest of the treatments.

Keywords: Ground covers, Partial root zone drying, grain yield, Quality traits, WUE, Weed control efficiency
Open Access: This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).


Citations
CrossRef11OpenAlex45Semantic Scholar39OpenCitations10
CrossRef
11
OpenAlex
45
Semantic Scholar
39
OpenCitations
10
Indicators
Metrics

Cite Score: 1.3

JCR Year: 2025

Indexing
Status

Web of Science (SCIE)

SCOPUS (Q3)

Journal Metrics
Current

Journal Impact Factor: 0.5

HEC Category: W

ISSN Details
Verified

Print ISSN: 1018-7081

Electronic ISSN: 2309-8694

Search the Journal

Use the fields below to search for articles by Title, Author, or Keywords.

All Downloads
Full Text
21,480
downloads
Supplementary
40
downloads