RESEARCH ARTICLE
Deficit Irrigation and Split N Fertilization on Wheat and Barley Yields in a Semi-Arid Mediterranean Area
C.G. Abourached§, S.K. Yau*, M.N. Nimah, I.I. Bashour
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2008Volume: 2
First Page: 28
Last Page: 34
Publisher ID: TOASJ-2-28
DOI: 10.2174/1874331500802010028
Article History:
Received Date: 5/03/2008Revision Received Date: 25/03/2008
Acceptance Date: 26/04/2008
Electronic publication date: 14/5/2008
Collection year: 2008
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
This study investigated the interactive effects of different rates of deficit irrigation and timings of N application on wheat and barley yields since there was no report on this important subject. Field experiments in strip-plot designs using sprinkler line sources were conducted for two years at a semi-arid Mediterranean site. The experiments consisted of 4 and 7 irrigation levels with 3 and 6 N treatments in 4 replicates in 2002-03 and 2003-04, respectively. In both years, there was a significant irrigation-by-N interaction on wheat grain yield but not on barley. In 2003-04, N application at stem elongation and heading produced the highest wheat grain yield at the four higher irrigation levels, but highest yield was obtained when N was applied at sowing and tillering at the two lowest irrigation levels. Nitrogen application at stem elongation and heading also gave the highest grain N content. The existence of interaction due to irrigation-by-timing of N application in wheat but not in barley could be because wheat has a higher N uptake after anthesis but lower nitrogen remobilization efficiency than barley. Results suggested that wheat farmers better apply N at stem elongation and heading for a higher yield and grain N content unless they are not irrigating or irrigate with minimum amount of water.
