Regulated Deficit Irrigation Impact at Various Growth Stages and Productivity of Soybean

Abstract

Regulated deficit irrigation (RDI) is being used as a valued and sustainable strategy in the worldwide arid and semi-arid regions. By limiting the water usage at drought-sensitive stages of plant, the pivotal aim of this practice is to improve water usage efficiency for productivity and to stabilize it instead of maximizing yields in numerous countries. The current study was undertaken in order to investigate the various RDI regimes at different stages of plant growth and development (seedling, branching, flowering, bearing pod, seed filling and maturity) of Chinese soybean plant. For the purposed study, a pot-based experiment was conducted by imposing the total 23 RDI treatments along thrice replications in randomized complete block design (RCBD) condition. The retrieved statistical analysis exposed that the RDI regimes have differential outcomes at various plant stages of soybean. Overall, the most favorable growth condition was observed at various stages under T₁ (55-65% field capacity) at seedling stage and branching stage, under T₉ (65-75% field capacity) at flowering stage and T₁₅ (65-75% field capacity) in seed filling stage among the all regulated deficit irrigation treatments but when the plants were fully irrigated with T₂₃ (90-100% field capacity), they expressed severe affect during seedling and branching stage due to water logging but owing to full irrigation during critical stages plant growth it showed the utmost yield.

Keywords: Regulated Deficit Irrigation (RDI), Field Capacity, Soybean, Black Soil, Growth Stage and Production