The Effects of Drought Stress at Different Phenological Stages on Morphological Traits and Yield Components of a Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) under Greenhouse Conditions

Document Type : Research Article

Authors

Ferdowsi University of Mashhad

Abstract

Abstract
In order to evaluate the effect of drought stress on different phonological stages of jam chickpea (cicer arietinum L.) an experiment as completely randomized design with four replications was conducted at Research Greenhouse of Agriculture Faculty, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad. Drought stress was applied by no irrigation until the soil moisture reached to 20 percent of field capacity at different growth stages including the seedling, rapid growth, flowering, podding and seed filling. The traits such as plant height, node numbers, number and length of lateral branchs, leaf dry matter were measured. All these traits significantly decreased by application of drought stress at different phonological stages. The maximum amount of plant seed weight and seed number, pod number, number and length of lateral branches were obtained for control and the minimum amount of these traits were for flowering stage. Results showed that the flowering stage in chickpea plant is more sensitive to drought stress. Although drought stress at seedling and rapid growth stages decreased the morphologic traits, leaf dry matter and seed number, but the seed weight in plant was similar to control and 100 seed weight was greater than control.

Keywords: Chickpea, Drought stress, Phenological stages

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