Effects of Water Stress and Nitrogen Fertilization on Growth Yield and Grain Production of Barley

Abstract

Reclamation of new lands was and still going in rather slow rate not parallel to the increase in population. Therefore increasing the efficiency of production of the existing land will contribute to the solution of this problem. Barley is one of the most important winter cereal crops grown mainly in areas where limited water supply is a feature and crops depend upon rainfall.

The present study was conducted to investigate the effect of water stress and N fertilization on growth yield and grain production of barley and N uptake by plants and N behavior in the soil under investigation. The experiment was carried out under greenhouse conditions in a "Randomized complete Block (RCB) design with three replicates the soil has sandy clay loam and salinity was 7.15 dS/m but sodicity was 11.0. However, total carbonate and organic matter content were 2.05% and 0.71% respectively. The fresh weight of barley increased by increasing period of growth up to elongation and then slightly decreased at the heading stage. Also, the highest fresh and dry matter weight of Barley in general, was obtained by application of N as ammonium sulphate under soil moisture at 100% F.C. Application of N fertilized increased grains yield compared with the unfertilized plants. In addition, application N as ammonium sulphate showed an increase over when urea was used with about 13.7%. Applying N as two equal doses was more effective than when applied as one dose. The relative increase due to splitting the amount of applied N was 147.5% and 132.6% when urea and ammonium sulphate were used respectively. The highest grains yield was obtained by applying N as two doses of ammonium sulphate when soil moisture was maintained around 75% of the soil field capacity.