Water Conservation On Corn Forage Crop Using Surfactant At Saline Soil and Water Conditions.

Crop production in Central Iran is facing difficulty in obtaining sufficient volumes of high quality irrigation water. Issues surrounding the availability of water have led to application of different agronomic and chemical technologies to reduce the water application and consumption of low quality (saline water) for crop production. This experiment was conducted to evaluate the potential of water conservation using a surfactant material under limited irrigation and saline condition. The experiment was conducted at Qoam Agricultural Research Station, Qoam, Iran during 2010 and 2011 growing seasons. The main experimental plots (Irrigation regimes) were laid out in strips and water treatments were assigned to the split plots. The treatments were replicated four times. Application of different limited irrigation regimes (irrigation after 70 mm, 100 mm and 130 mm cumulative évaporation from standard pan class A) were the primary factor and application of surfactant in irrigation water (saline water with and without surfactant) was considered as the secondary factor. The combined analysis of variance for both years (2010 and 2011) of the experiment showed a significant effect (p<0.05) for irrigation regimes, surfactant application and their interaction on all corn forage yield parameters (total forage dry matter, leaf dry matter, stem dry matter and leaf/stem ratio). All measured forage parameters followed a decreasing trend as the severity of limited irrigation increased. Application of surfactant induced stability in dry leaf yield of corn at all irrigation regimes. The significantly higher stem, leaf and total forage yield with treated water (saline water + surfactant) across all irrigation regimes well explained the superiority of surfactant application to increase the water use efficiency in regard to corn forage production under limited irrigation at saline conditions.

Key words: corn, surfactant, limited irrigation, saline soil, saline water, forage yield