Abstract
Crop production in arid and semiarid conditions is faced with water limitation. Corn production in Iran accounts for a considerable amount of the annual irrigation water use of this drought-prone Country. Thus a field experiment was conducted to investigate the impact of irrigation regimes on growth, chlorophyll fluorescence and grain yield of maize in 2006 at the Research Farm, College of Agriculture, Isfahan University of Technology, using a three-replicate split-plot RCBD. Four irrigation regimes (I1, I2, I3 and I4, representing no drought, slight, moderate and severe drought, respectively) were the main plots and four corn hybrids (SC704, SC700, SC500 and TC647) served as subplots. Chlorophyll fluorescence parameters such as F0, Fm and Fv/Fm in addition to LAI and grain yield were studied. While hybrids differed in their F0 at leaf10 stage, they differed with regard to Fm at tasseling stage. No significant difference was found between irrigation regimes in terms of chlorophyll fluorescence parameters, though LAI decreased with drought. Grain yield differed among hybrids and irrigation regimes, with the I4 producing the lowest grain yield, compared to other irrigation regimes. SC700 outperformed other hybrids in terms of grain yield. It seems that, at least with the present study, a decreased photosynthetic area leaves a more pronounced impact on plant productivity, compared to a decreased efficiency of PSII under drought conditions.
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Ashghizadeh, H.R., Ehsanzadeh, P. (2008). Maize (Zea Maize L.) Performance Under Drought: Decreased Photosynthetic Area vs. Decreased Efficiency of PSII. In: Allen, J.F., Gantt, E., Golbeck, J.H., Osmond, B. (eds) Photosynthesis. Energy from the Sun. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6709-9_311
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6709-9_311
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