Effect of different irrigation regimes on grain yield of wheat under local conditions of Dera Ghazi Khan

Field trials were conducted to estimate the effect of number of irrigations on yield of wheat crop in the semi arid area of Pakistan at Adaptive Research Farm, Mouza Rakh Chabbri Zareen, D. G. Khan for three consecutive years from 2005-06 to 2007-08. The study comprised of three treatments including four irrigations (T-1) at crown root development, booting, milking and grain development; five irrigations (T-2) at crown root development, tillering, milking, grain development and dough stage and six irrigations (T-3) at crown root development, tillering, milking, grain development, dough stage and at maturity. The results revealed that during the year 2005-06 and 2006-07 the grain yield and yield contributing parameters were significantly higher when crop was irrigated with five irrigations (T-2), while 1000-grains weight, germination count m(-2) and number of tillers m(-2) were not affected significantly during the year 2005-06 and 2007-08. The highest grain yield was recorded with five irrigations at different critical growth stages of wheat crop. The possible reason might be availability of more moisture. The results revealed that the application of irrigation at tillering stage played a vital role to increase wheat yield and contrarily the application of irrigation at maturity caused decrease in wheat yield.