Effect of Various Irrigation Treatments on Qualitative and Quantitative Characteristics of Sweet Corn

Water deficit and dwindling water resources are the most important factors that limit agricultural products in the world and Iran. To study the effect of deficit irrigation by method of furrow irrigation on yield and yield components of sweet corn, an investigation is conducted in a randomized complete block design in 4 treatments with four replications, in Research Farm of the Faculty of Agriculture of Birjand, including: 1- an alternative furrow irrigation (AFI) 2- a fixed furrow irrigation (FFI) 3- double furrow irrigation in 14 days (DFI) 4- a critical furrow irrigation of all tracks treatment control (CFI) time constant irrigation to 7 days, depending on the irrigation area was considered. The time for irrigation is calculated from the infiltration equation of Kostiakov Lewis and other treatments of deficit irrigation are planned on this basis. The results of variance analysis show that the effects of irrigation treatments were significant at the level of 1% upon the biologic yield, the number of leaf, dry weight of leaf, dry weight of stem, shrub height, stem height, the amount of protein in stem, leaf and grain. However, it was not significant upon fat of leaf, stem and grain. Height of shrub and diameter of stem have respectively the highest and lowest impact on determining the yield among the components of biologic yield with correlation coefficient of (r=0.915), (r=0.906) and the number of leaf for (r=0.276). The alternative and fixed furrow irrigations have been well quantitatively selected as the appropriate irrigation treatments with biologic fficiency of 1.5 and 1.6 kg/ha water consumption. The alternative and fixed furrow irrigation treatments have been presented as the best solution for water saving in arid and semi-arid fields with 50% and 60% saving and 6.9% and 14.22% reduction in biologic yield.

Keywords:

Sweet Corn , Alternative Furrow Irrigation (AFI) , Water Consumption Efficiency , Biologic Yield