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Wheat Information
Number 77: 33-38 (1993)

Wheat cultivation under saline irrigation

C. P. S. Chauhan and S. P. Singh

I. C. A. R. Coordinated Research Project on Management of Salt Affected Soils and Use of Saline Water in Agriculture, Raja Balwant Singh College, Bichpuri, Agra-283105, India


Introduction

Wheat (Triticum aestivum L. emend. Thell) is one of the most important cereal crops of the world to nourish the mankind. It is grown in wide range of climatic zone and mostly in irrigated conditions. In the and and semi-arid areas, saline ground water is a common feature. Irrigation with saline water throughout the growth period of crops resulted in deterimental affect on growth and yield potential of the crops. Bernstein (1964), Bhumbla et a]. (1964), Kanwar and Kanwar (1969) and Tripathi and Pal (1979) have reported the reduction in yield of wheat with high saline irrigations. Besides, grain yield, crop growth and yield attributes are found to vary with sensitivity for salinity. Therefore, it will be of vital interest for scientist to try to overcome the salinity menace to predict the wheat crop growth development and yield potential with varying salinity of irrigation water on the basis of long term experimentation.


Material and methods

A field experiment in microplot size of 2.5 m x 2.5 m (net plot size 2 m x 2 m) was conducted during rabi seasons of 1972-73 to 1978-79 consecutively at the Research Farm, Raja Balwant Singh College, Bichpuri, Agra, India. The plots were separated by polythene sheets upto 0.9 m depth to prevent lateral movement of water and salt. The annual rainfall in the region is about 600-700 mm of which about 80% is received during July, August and September. The soil was alluvial, sandy loam (15% clay,14% silt and 70% sand) in texture with 1.75 cm/hr hydraulic conductivity. The soil initially had ECe 3 dS/m, pH2 8.6, SARe 15 and ESP 6 at surface (0-15 cm) depth.

Seven salinity levels of irrigation water with ECiw (control), 2, 4, 6, 8, 12 and 16 dS/m were tried in Randomized Block Design with four replications. Artificially synthetic water were prepared from canal water by adding the salts of chlorides of sodium, calcium and magnesium and sulfates and bicarbonates of sodium keeping the ratio of Na:Mg:Ca as 60:25:15 and CI:S04:HC03 as 2:1:1 as long as sulfates did not exceed 30 miliequivalent/litre and HC03 10 miliequivalent and excess of these ions were substituted by chloride ion. The composition of these irrigation waters are as per composition of the ground water of this locality. Under the Pearl Millet-Wheat crop rotation for consecutive 7 years on the same field, wheat (HD 1593) was sown in November and harvested in April in respective years. The crop was fertilized with the dose 120 Kg/ha N and 60 Kg/ha P205. Irrigation was adjusted at 6 cm CPE with ratio 1.0 of CPE/depth of irrigation. In all, 4-5 irrigations were provided each year for wheat cultivation. The details of rainfall and water table depth are presented in Table1.

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