Does silicon and irrigation have impact on drought tolerance mechanism of sorghum?

Mukhtar Ahmed, Fayyaz-ul-Hassen and Yasir Khurshid

Agricultural Water Management, 2011, vol. 98, issue 12, 1808-1812

Abstract: Silicon absorption by crops in the form of silicic acid confers efficient utilization of available irrigation water by minimizing transpiration losses. In present study, silicon and irrigation effects on sorghum growth dynamics and drought tolerance mechanism were evaluated during 2007-2008. Two sorghum cultivars: PARCSS2 and Johar1 were treated with two levels of silicon (Si0 = control and Si200 = 200 ml l-1 of potassium silicate per kg of soil) and irrigation (W0 = control, crop lower limit and W40 = 40 mm of water, crop upper limit). The results depicted that silicon absorption led to increased leaf water potential, growth, transpiration, net photosynthetic rate and decreased shoot to root ratio in sorghum cultivars compared to control treatment. It can be concluded that synergistic effect of silicon fertilization with ample irrigation may improve the crop stand under drought and biotic stresses.

Keywords: Drought; Leaf; water; potential; Growth; dynamics; Irrigation; Synergistic (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378377411001491
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:agiwat:v:98:y:2011:i:12:p:1808-1812

Access Statistics for this article

Agricultural Water Management is currently edited by B.E. Clothier, W. Dierickx, J. Oster and D. Wichelns

More articles in Agricultural Water Management from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().