Impact of irrigation stress on agronomic traits of promising wheat varieties in Tandojam-Pakistan

A field trial was conducted at Latif Farm, Tandojam Pakistan to study the impact of the irrigation stress on growth and yield traits of promising wheat varieties in Rabi 2016.The experiment was laid out in three replicated Split Plot Design.Three wheat varieties (TD-1, SKD-1 and Imdad-2005) were tested against four irrigation level treatments (five recommended irrigations: 25, 50, 75, 100 and 125 DAS-days after sowing, one irrigation: 25 DAS, two irrigations: 25 and 50 DAS, and three irrigations: 25, 75 and 100 DAS).The results indicated that all growth and yield traits of tested wheat varieties were significantly affected (P<0.05) by the irrigation levels.In terms of yield performance, recommended irrigation proved the best in terms of economic crop which resulted in 398.0 tillers m -2 , 76.2 cm plant height, 54.2 gm seed index (1000-grain weight) and 6368 kg ha -1 grain yield.The crop applied with three and two irrigations ranked 2 nd and 3 rd in grain yield (5429 and 5301 kg ha -1 ) respectively.In case of varieties, Imdad-2005 was ranked 1 st with 390.5 tillers m -2 , 83.2 cm plant height, 52.4 gm seed index and 5557 kg ha -1 grain yield, followed by SKD-1 and TD-1 in grain yield (5209 and 4577 kg ha -1 ), respectively.The interaction of variety Imdad-2005 X recommended irrigations produced maximum (6593 kg ha -1 ) grain yield.Hence, it is concluded from the results that recommended irrigation proved adequate for achieving desired performance in wheat where all the varieties produced higher grain yield as compared to other levels of irrigation.