Production components and water use efficiency of corn under irrigation depths

This study aims to analyze the production components and the water-use efficiency of corn cultivated with irrigation depths, and also to verify the utilization of multivariate analysis is suitable to highlight the relevant information.Hybrid corn AG 7088 was used as plant material.Two experiments were conducted under field conditions at two different experimental periods between the months of April and December 2015 in a randomized block design with six irrigation depths [50, 75, 100 (control), 125, 150, and 175% replacement of evapotranspiration -ET 0 ] and four replications.At 120 days after sowing, the following variables were evaluated: mass of one thousand grains, number of spikes per plot, yield of dry grains, ear length, ear diameter, number of lines per ear, number of grains per line, number of ears grain per spike, grain mass per spike, cob mass, spaghetti mass, and mass of straws.The results showed that production components and water use efficiency of hybrid corn AG 7088 were not affected by the varying water depths in the first experimental period.In the second period, the increase in water depth supported a gain in the mass of a thousand grains, dry grain yield, grain number per row, grain number per ear, corn cob mass and mass of dehusked ear, reducing the efficiency of water use.The use of multivariate analysis was able to reduce the multi-dimensional space of the set of variables in the three Principal Components with relevant information to highlight differences between irrigation depths and experimental periods.