Abstract:
In hot and arid regions,
drought stress is considered as one of the
main reasons for yield reduction. To study
the effect of drought stress and zinc spray
on the yield and yield components of corn,
an experiment was carried out during the
crop seasons of 2010 and 2011 on Research
Farm, Islamic Azad University of Gonabad
as a split factorial within randomized
complete block design with three
replications. The main plots with irrigation
factor and four levels were considered: A)
full irrigation, B) stopping irrigation at
pollination step, and C) stopping irrigation
at the seed filling and four levels of zinc
sulfate including 0 and 0.5%, 1% and 1.5%
spraying (tassel initiation and grain filling)
were as the subplots. The drought stress
reduced the thousand kernels weight (TKW)
in seed filling stage and the number of seeds
per ear in tasseling stage about 11% and
27% less than the one of control treatment,
respectively. Zinc increased the thousand
kernels weight from 27.3 to 31.3 grams and
induced an increase in the number of seeds
per ear from 710 to 770. The results
obtained within the present research showed
that zinc spray has fairly improved the
effects caused by drought stress.
