Soil water balance and response of spring maize (Zea mays) to mulching and differential irrigation in Punjab
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.59797/ija.v60i2.4450Keywords:
Evapo-transpiration, Grain yield, Soil-moisture storage, Spring maize, Water-use efficiencyAbstract
A field experiment was conducted during 2007 and 2008 at Ludhiana, to study the effect of paddy straw mulch- ing (0 and 6 t/ha) and irrigation regimes (irrigation water/open pan evaporation ratio 1.2 (I ), 0.9 (I ) and 0.6 (I )) 1.2 0.9 0.6 on performance of spring maize (Zea mays L.) Mulching significantly increased mean seasonal soil-moisture stor- age and transpiration during both years with overall pooled values of 122.2 and 38.7 mm for soil-moisture storage and 566.5 and 549.2 mm for seasonal transpiration under mulching and no mulching treatments respectively. Mean seasonal soil-moisture storage and transpiration were significantly more under I and I treatments than 1.2 0.9 I during both years. However, during both years mulching significantly reduced mean seasonal soil evaporation 0.6 compared with no-mulching. Mulching and irrigation significantly increased leaf-area index (LAI) of spring maize. During both seasons, mulching significantly increased grain yield, yield attributes and water-use efficiency (WUE) of spring maize over no-mulching with overall mean grain yield values of 4.96 and 4.22 t/ha and WUE values of 8.76 and 7.64 kg/ha/mm under mulching and no-mulching treatments respectively. Significantly higher grain yield and WUE were also observed under I over I irrigation treatment. 1.2 0.6References
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