The effect of super absorbent on yield and yield components of chickpea under season terminal drought stress conditions

Water is the prime requirement for the existence of life. Due to the limited water resources, it is essential to save and economize the use of water resources. This can be achieved by applying proper water management including storage and maintaining soil water, improving soil water permeability and increasing water use efficiency. Due to the importance of chickpea plants as a source of protein and the other side, irreparable damage of terminal drought for chickpea, the achievement of strategies for drought tolerance can be very important and necessary. Super absorbent polymers of hydrocarbons can absorb and hold water, several times their weight and the polymer discharged at water deficit condition, gradually. The soil remains wet for a long time and again, don’t need to irrigation. The effectiveness of super absorbent soil sandy loam is higher than loam and clay soils. With increasing consumption, biomass and water use efficiency increases. An experiment on corn was found that the use of 0.05 percent super absorbent material in clay loam soil and 0.01 percent loam and 0.03 percent sand soil for best results in terms of dry matter production and water use efficiency. The objective of this study was to determine the right amount of super absorbent to achieve maximum chickpea yield and yield components under drought stress and also the most sensitive stages of chickpea growth to drought stress.

In order to evaluate effect of super absorbent and terminal drought stress on yield and yield components of chickpea (Hashem cultivar), a field experiment was conducted as split plot on randomized complete block design with four replications during 2014 in Chaghatay. Treatments included drought stress: cutting irrigation at flowering stage, cutting irrigation at the beginning poding stage and control condition (non stress), in the main plots and the use of super absorbent in three levels: 0, 50 and 100 kg.ha-1 subplots. Studied traits included plant height, pod number per plant, number seed per pod, protein percent, 1000 seed weight, economic and biological yield and harvest index.

Results indicated that yield, biological yield, number pod per plant, number grain per pod, grain weight and protein content were decreased with cutting of irrigation but plant height and harvest index were not significantly different. The use of super absorbent may moderate the effect of drought stress on yield and yield components were chickpeas. The maximum yield and yield component were obtained by the use of 100 kg.ha-1 super absorbent while no significant effect on the protein content, but the protein in cut irrigation at flowering stage with 115.23 kg/ha was more than the protein in cut irrigation at pod stage with 77.29 kg/ha.

To obtain optimum yield in drought stress condition, the best result was obtained of 100 kg.ha-1 super absorbent.