The supplementary irrigation effects on drought tolerance and ornamental characteristics of safflower genotypes

Supplementary irrigation is a high-performance operation for increasing crop production and income of farmers in dry land conditions. In order to study the effect of supplementary irrigation on drought tolerance and ornamental characteristics of safflower genotypes an experiment was conducted in 2013-14 at North Khorasan Dryland Agricultural Research Station (Shirvan). The experimental design was split plot based on Randomized Complete Block Design with four replications. Factors were included five levels of irrigation, i.e., no irrigation, irrigation at rosette stage, flowering stage, seed filling and irrigation in flowering + seed filling as the main factors, and sub factors were varieties in three levels (Feraman, Sina and Syrian). Results showed that the effect of supplementary irrigation on harvest index, seed number per main head, seed number in branch heads, 1000-kernel weight and grain yield was significant. The highest biomass was obtained in Feraman with 1.69 kg/m2. Feraman had the highest plant height, and could produce more biomass than the other varieties. The effect of supplementary irrigation on traits: stand, days to stem elongation, start and end of flowering, RGR, CGR, number of branches, number of hollow seeds and number of branch heads (number of flowers) was not significant. Mean comparison showed the superiority of irrigation at flowering stage in compare with other treatments, and the highest yield was obtained with irrigation at flowering stage in Feraman with 423.43 kg/ha. The highest harvest index was observed in Feraman with irrigation at flowering stage

کلیدواژه ها:

Carthamus tinctorius ، Flower color ، Optimum irrigation ، Phenological traits