The response of quantitative and qualitative characteristics of sugar beet to foliar application of methanol under drought stress

Considering the limitations that drought stress imposes on plants, use of strategies that control or reduce the adverse effects of drought stress is important. In order to evaluate the effect of methanol foliar applicationspraying on some quantitative and qualitative traits of sugar beet under different conditions of available moisture, a field experiment was conducted for two years in the research field of Islamic Azad University, Karaj Branch, Iran, as a split plot in randomized complete blocks with three replications. The first factor was the irrigation at two levels of S1 (normal irrigation after 40% of available moisture drain) and S2 (irrigation after 70% of available moisture drain) and the second factor was different methanol concentrations with three levels (control), 14 and 28% by volume of methanol) in which  the first factor was assigned in the main plot and the second factor in the sub-plot. The studied traits included root yield, sugar content, sodium, potassium, nitrogen, alkalinity, white sugar content, molasses sugar, sugar yield, and white sugar yield. Results showed that methanol can increase root yield, sugar yield, and white sugar yield regardless of the amount of available moisture; so that the highest root yield was related to the 14 and 28% volume of methanol with 70.12 and 68.87 t ha-1, respectively, which were statistically placed in the same group.