Effects of Various Irrigation Treatments on Qualitative and Quantitative Characteristics of Sweet Corn

Water deficit and dwindling water resources are the most important factors that limits agricultural products in the world and Iran. To study the effect of deficit irrigation by method of furrow irrigation on yield and yield components of sweet corn, an investigation was conducted in a randomized complete block design in 4 treatments with four replications, in Research Farm of the Faculty of Agriculture of university Birjand, including: 1- alternative furrow irrigation (AFI) 2- fixed furrow irrigation (FFI) 3- double furrow irrigation in 14 days (DFI) 4- critical furrow irrigation of all tracks treatment control (CFI) time constant irrigation to 7 days, depending on the irrigation area was considered. The timing for irrigation was calculated from the infiltration equation of Kostiakov -Lewis and other treatments of deficit irrigation were planned on this basis. The results of variance analysis shows that the effects of irrigation treatments were significant at the level of 1% upon the biological yields, the number of leaves, dry weight of leaves, dry weight of stem, shrub height, stem height, the amount of protein in stem, leaf and grain. However, it was not significant upon fat of leaf, stem and grain. height of shrub and diameter of stem have respectively the highest and lowest impact on determining the yield among the components of biological yield with correlation coefficient of (r=0.915), (r=0.906) and the number of leaves by(r=0.276). The alternative and fixed furrow irrigations well quantitatively selected and the appropriate irrigation treatments with biologic efficiency of 1.5 and 1.6 kg/ha water consumption. The alternative and fixed furrow irrigation treatments presented as the best solution for water saving in arid and semi-arid fields with 50% and 60% saving amount 6.9% and 14.22% reduction in biological yields.

Sweet Corn, Alternative Furrow Irrigation (AFI), Water Consumption Efficiency, Biological Yields