Soil Water Content and Grain Yield Relationships in Some Algerian Wheat Varieties

Abstract

In the semi-arid lands where the climate changes known a disaster impact bring about drought and high temperature, and the water is considered as the limiting factor of yield; the supplementary irrigation can be one of the resolutions. The aim of this study is to assess the capacity of five genotypes to dodge from drought and heats impacts. The experimentation was implemented during the seasons 2021/2022 and 2022/2023 at the experimental Algerian Technical Institute for field crops (ITGC) of Setif, Algeria, to determine phenological development length by evaluating varieties with great tolerance expressed by stress tolerance index (STI). Indeed, focusing on water use efficiency (WUE), and determination of the relationships among these parameters in relation to grain yield (GY) and its components of durum wheat. Five varieties, three of which are local were considered under two treatments; pluvial and supplementary irrigation by drip irrigation system. Significant differences were found among varieties in almost all studied parameters with an important effect of temperature on the length of phenological development with the higher value of 2600°C obtained by Mohamed Ben Bachir (MBB). For Boussellam variety a high performance is achieved in grain yield, WUE and STI with a values of 8.2 t.ha-¹,1.5 kg.mm^-1 and 0.19 respectively. The results proved the significance of using thermal time coupling with soil water content (SWC) to investigate models that determine different growth stages and control differently the WUE which has a very strong correlation with GY r=0.96. For STI and GY a negative correlation coefficient of r= -0.64 was recorded. The WUE and STI can be improved in selection programs with the advantage of using local varieties, and can also be controlled by irrigation amount and time which is really interesting at the sowing-emergence and heading anthesis period in order to increase GY.