Water use efficiency and harvest index of corn affected by partial root-zone drying in the Kerman area

Partial root-zone drying (PRD) is a new deficit irrigation technique which improves water use efficiency. To evaluate the effect of PRD method on corn, an experiment was conducted at the Research Farm of College of Agriculture, Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman in the spring of 2010 using a randomized complete block design with three replications. The nineteen irrigation treatments were as follows: control, mild water stress (irrigation with 75% ETP), high water stress (irrigation with 50% ETP), fixed every other furrow irrigation (irrigation with 50% ETP) and three partial root-zone drying (change the wet furrows in every irrigation, change the wet furrows in every other irrigation and change the wet furrows in every second irrigations). Every deficit irrigation treatment was applied at three growth stages of corn (all periods of growth, vegetative growth stage and reproductive growth stage). The results showed that the highest WUE for dry forage yield was 2.67, for the biological yield was 6.02 and for grain yield was 2.13 kg/m3. Harvest index was obtained for different treatments between 0.25 and 0.48. In this study, the partial root-zone drying was the best choice to apply deficit irrigation for corn.