Vikas Singh Sengar

13-12-2022 01:55 AM

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Vikas Singh Sengar1, Rahul Ojha2 and Nisha3

1. Assistant Professor, Shivalik Institute of Professional Studies, Dehradun
2. Assistant Professor, RVSKVV, Gwalior
3. Research Scholar, Entomology, Shri Ram Janki Mahavihyala , Ram Nagar, Amawasufi, Ayodhya

Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) belongs to family poaceae. It is the most important food crop of the world, which occupied the largest crop area and has greater production than any other crop. It provides food to 36 % of the global population. It contains about 12% protein, 2% total fat, 55% carbohydrates (Kumar et al., 2011).

Therefore, selection of proper variety and their fertility and irrigation management play important roles in maintaining the productivity. Sowing time and wheat varieties are the most crucial factors deciding its productivity. In late sown varieties of wheat, all the growth stages, such as tillering, flowering, and grain filling, are adversely affected by the shortened growing period. The reduction in the optimum growth period caused by a rise in temperature leads to leaf senescence resulting in a photosynthetic rate that is too low to meet plant.

At present there is a tremendous scope for increasing the yield of wheat with the use of multi-character high yielding varieties. The huge reduction in yield due to delayed sowing prompted us to evaluate optimum time of sowing for different varieties for maximum production. Among the various agronomic factors, sowing of wheat is considered to be prime importance for proper distribution of plants over cultivated area, thereby better utilization of available soil and atmospheric resources. It is generally sown in straight unidirectional row i.e., line sowing (22.5 cm apart) where in plants are usually over-crowded. They suffer from mutual shading and lower leaves do not get full sunlight. The tillering of plants is also affected. Thus, the plants do not make sufficient use of resources for photosynthesis. However, it is indicated that bi-directional sowing is superior compared to present recommendation of unidirectional one. In FIRB planting system, generally, two to three rows of wheat are planted on the top of bed 70 cm wide and irrigation is done through furrows. It has been reported that wheat crop under furrow irrigated raised bed (FIRB) system produced higher grain yield compared to conventional sowing. Besides yield advantage, no lodging was observed in any of the varieties. It also provides an opportunity of mechanical weeding in furrows and on the top of beds (Anonymous, 1996).

Water is a precious and scare input plays a vital role in assured crop production since it is essential for the maintenance to turgidity, absorption of nutrients and the metabolic process of the plants. Therefore, it becomes imperative to develop an optimum irrigation schedule to maintain the sufficient available soil moisture throughout the crop period for best exploitation of crop yield potential. Among the several recognized criteria of irrigation scheduling, climatologically approach is very scientific and widely accepted among the scientists and research workers throughout the world. It is well known that evapo-transpiration by a full crop cover is closely associated with the evaporation from an open pan. The productivity of wheat depends on the prevailing environmental conditions during the crop growth, which cannot be modified to a great extent under field conditions with the adoption of modern agronomic management, timely scheduling irrigation can create favorable soil moisture regime. Irrigation increases the availability of water and nutrients through the establishment of relatively favorable moisture conditions around root zone of the crop. However, the research work done on irrigation scheduling of wheat crop raised under different methods of sowing is very negligible, hence there is need to work out irrigation requirement of wheat crop. The importance of irrigation management has further increase with the introduction of the dwarf wheat cultivars throughout the country, for achieving the maximum yield of different wheat varieties.