N Nourmahnad, M Emamzadei, B Ghorbani, A.r Mohamdkhani,
Volume 13, Issue 50 (winter 2010)
Abstract
Water scarcity causes production losses in arid and semi arid regions. In this condition, deficit irrigation is one of the most important methods to minimize effects of water shortage. This research was conducted to evaluate the effects of two kinds of irrigation management (deficit irrigation and partial rootzone drying technique) on some of physiological and phenological characteristics and water use efficiency of tomato. The experiment was carried out in a completely randomized design with five treatments and four replications. The treatments consisted of DI75 and DI50 (supplying 75% and 50% water requirement) applied to the whole root system, PRD75 and PRD50 (supplying 75% and 50% water requirement) which was applied to one side of the root system, and alternated in every irrigation, and FI treatment, which supplied 100% water requirement, and was considered as control. The results showed that the highest water use efficiency was observed in PRD75 (6.28 kg/m3) and the lowest in DI50 (1.98 kg/m3). Water use efficiency was reduced 67% in DI50 and increased 4.6% in PRD75, as compared with full irrigation. Furthermore, plant water state showed that relative water content was higher in PRD treatments than DI treatments. The analysis of variance indicated that there was a significant difference in leaf diameter stomata among treatments at 5% level .The higher level of water increased stomata diameter. The opening of stomata in FI and DI treatments was higher than PRD treatments. FI had the highest numbers of stomata per unit of leaf area and PRD50 had the lowest (10509.04 and 6904.4, respectively). There was no difference among treatments in phenological characteristics in terms of growing degree-day to fruit yield and growing-degree day to harvesting.
