Water use of winter cereals under well-watered and drought-stressed conditions

B. Varga, E. Varga-László, S. Bencze, K. Balla and O. Veisz
Additional contact information
B. Varga: Cereal Resistance Breeding Department, Centre for Agricultural Research, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Martonvásár, Hungary
E. Varga-László: Cereal Resistance Breeding Department, Centre for Agricultural Research, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Martonvásár, Hungary
S. Bencze: Cereal Resistance Breeding Department, Centre for Agricultural Research, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Martonvásár, Hungary
K. Balla: Cereal Resistance Breeding Department, Centre for Agricultural Research, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Martonvásár, Hungary
O. Veisz: Cereal Resistance Breeding Department, Centre for Agricultural Research, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Martonvásár, Hungary

Plant, Soil and Environment, 2013, vol. 59, issue 4, 150-155

Abstract: A reduction in the water available to plants will lend increasing importance to the dynamics of water uptake and to the water use efficiency (WUE) of cereals. The effect of drought on the water use efficiency of winter cereals was investigated in a greenhouse experiment in the Centre for Agricultural Research. The effect of water deficiency on the water use properties was studied by measuring changes in the grain weight, thousand-kernel weight and aboveground biomass. The water use efficiency of wheat varieties generally ranged from 1.5-2.3 kg/m3 and 1.06-2.0 kg/m3 in the case of optimum and limited water supplies, respectively, while these figures were 1.4 kg/m3 and 0.8 kg/m3 for winter barley and 0.8 kg/m3 and 0.5 kg/m3 for winter oat. Investigation on the relationship between harvest index (HI) and WUE was found that the harvest index is only one indicator of drought tolerance; but the stability of HI under non-optimum environmental conditions also needs to be determined.

Keywords: water uptake; water use efficiency; harvest index; water shortage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://pse.agriculturejournals.cz/doi/10.17221/658/2012-PSE.html (text/html)
http://pse.agriculturejournals.cz/doi/10.17221/658/2012-PSE.pdf (application/pdf)
free of charge

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:caa:jnlpse:v:59:y:2013:i:4:id:658-2012-pse

DOI: 10.17221/658/2012-PSE

Access Statistics for this article

Plant, Soil and Environment is currently edited by Kateřina Součková

More articles in Plant, Soil and Environment from Czech Academy of Agricultural Sciences
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ivo Andrle ().