The Effect of Zinc Sulfate Foliar Spray on Yield and Yield Components of Sardari Wheat Ecotypes

The interest of farmers to apply fertilizer containing micronutrients has been spread in order to increase yields and to improve the quality of their products. In order to investigate the effects of foliar application of zinc sulfate on yield and yield components of Sardari wheat ecotypes, an experiment was conducted as split plot based on randomized complete block design with two factors and three replications at the Experimental Farm of University of Kurdistan in 2012-2013. Factors were: Sardari ecotypes in fourteen levels (thirteen ecotypes of sardari wheat and Azar2 cultivar) were placed in main plots and and foliar application of zinc sulfate at three levels (without spraying, spraying at shoot elongation and spraying after flowering) were allocated to sub-plots. The measured characteristics included: biological yield, grain yield, harvest index, number of spikes per plant, seeds per spike, spike length and thousand seed weight. Results showed that the effect of ecotype was significant on all traits. The effect of zinc spraying was significant on all traits except for spike number per plant. The interaction between ecotype × zinc spraying effect was significant on biological yield, grain yield, harvest index and grain number per spike. The highest yield was recorded in Kalate ecotype and spraying at shoot elongation and the lowest yield obtained from Ryzhav ecotype without spraying. Maximum number of grains per spike was related to Kalate ecotype and spraying at shoot elongation (25.38). Kalate ecotype had the highest thousand seed weight by the average of 45.68 g.