Morphological traits, yield and yield components of safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.) cultivars under drought stress condition in Kerman province

摘要

According to the increasing need of our country to edible oil and also according to the limit of country water sources and its effect on yield and production of oil plants, an experiment was conducted in order to evaluate the response of safflower todrought stress, in a split plot arrangement based on randomized complete block design with three replications at Research Farm, Research Center of Kerman Agricultural Institute. The main plots included four irrigation levels (complete irrigation, irrigation disruption from the flowering stage, irrigation disruption from the heading-bud and irrigation disruption from stem elongation) and the secondary plots included three cultivars of safflower (Esfahan local, Kerman local and IL genotype). The results of this experiment showed that irrigation disruption in all stages caused a significant reduction of plant height, leaf area index (LAI), dry matter at max LAI, seed yield and components, biological yield, harvest index, oil percentage and oil yield. Maximum seed and oil yield was obtained in normal irrigation treatment, and irrigation disruption from flowering, heading-bud and stem elongation stages were in the next ranks, respectively. Among the cultivars, the highest and lowest seed yield was relatedto IL and Kerman local, respectively. Also among the yield components, number of seeds per head had the highest correlation with the grain yield. In overall, the results of this study showed that supplying suitable water amount during the growth period and sowing the Esfahan local cultivar prepare best yield production possibility. In contrast, with the Emit in water sources and the possibility of encountering of the plant with drought stress during the growth period, IL cultivar is better than the other cultivars.