Abstract

MIRANDA DOMINGUEZ, Luis Eduardo; LOPEZ CASTANEDA, Cándido; BENITEZ RIQUELME, Ignacio  and  MEJIA CONTRERAS, José Apolinar. Root development and yield in different genotypes of bread wheat, barley and triticale under limiting soil moisture conditions. Terra Latinoam [online]. 2016, vol.34, n.4, pp.393-407. ISSN 2395-8030.

Bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.), triticale (Triticosecale Wittmack) and barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) crops are grown under both irrigation and rainfed conditions in Mexico. Although they are cultivated in rainfed conditions in the summer-fall and in autumn-winter with residual moisture after the rainy season, they experience severe terminal drought. This research was conducted to study the grain yield (GY) and its components and root length density (RLD) under residual soil moisture conditions in Oaxaca, Mexico, during the fall-winter 2013-2014 growing season. A complete block design with four replicates was used. Plots consisted of four 4 × 0.4 m rows. A seeding rate of 100 kg ha‑1 and a fertilizer rate of 40-40-00 were used. The experiment was sown on October 5, 2013. Barley had higher GY than bread wheat and triticale; the higher GY was accompanied by high harvest index (HI), grain weight (GW) and RLD, and also lower plant stature and shorter biological cycle (BC). Bread wheat and triticale had similar GY, but the landrace of bread wheat, ‘Venturero’ produced greater GY than most of the bread wheat genotypes and triticale, with a high number of spikes m-2 (S M-2), GW, the highest grain density and RLD, and the longest BC. More than 50% of root length density accumulated near the soil surface (20 cm) in all genotypes. Bread wheat had higher RLD than barley and triticale in the 20-100 cm strata, and the bread wheat landrace ‘Venturero’ produced more roots than any of the other genotypes from the soil surface down to 100 cm. Genotypes of barley and bread wheat with higher RLD produced greater GY, confirming that they are more drought resistance.

Keywords : final aerial biomass; biological cycle; grain density; grain size; harvest index.

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