Investigation of Quantity and Quality Traits of Maize Yield under Partial Root Zone Drying and Deficit Irrigation Strategies

The partial root­­­ zone drying irrigation (PRD) is a novel improvement of deficit irrigation which has been tested for field crops and fruit trees in the last decade. This paper, evaluates effect of partial root zone drying (PRD) and deficit irrigation (DI) strategies on quality of the drip-irrigated maize yield under field condition. This study was done on Research Farm of Sari Agriculture Sciences and Natural Resources University based on Completely Randomized Design with three replications in 2010. Treatments are full irrigation (FI), partial root zone drying (PRD75, PRD55) and deficit irrigation(DI75,DI55). The results showed that the deficit irrigation treatments increased grain protein content so the protein percentages of grain yield for PRD75 and DI75 were significantly higher than full irrigation (FI). The highest value of protein percentages grain yield was found in PRD75 (10.02%) and the lowest one was observed in PRD55 (9.14%). Also there was no significant difference in thousand seed weight, number of kernel/row, number of row/ear between FI and PRD75. In general, results showed that PRD75 improved the quality traits of maize yield and non-significantly decrease of yield with saving 25% of water use during the treatment period.