Author(s)

Arbab Sahito¹, Zulfiqar Ali Baloch², Amanullah Mahar^3,4, Sohail Ahmed Otho⁵, Shahmir Ali Kalhoro⁶, Amjad Ali^3*, Fahad Ali Kalhoro⁷, Rab Nawaz Soomro⁸, Fayaz Ali³

¹Department of Agronomy, Sindh Agriculture University, Tando Jam, Pakistan.
²College of Economics and Management Sciences, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, China.
³College of Natural Resources and Environment, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, China.
⁴Centre for Environmental Sciences, University of Sindh, Jamshoro, Pakistan.
⁵College of Plant Protection, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, China.
⁶Faculty of Agriculture, Lasbela University of Agriculture, Water & Marine Sciences, Lasbela, Pakistan.
⁷Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, Sindh Agriculture University, Tando Jam, Pakistan.
⁸College of Animal Science and Technology, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, China.

Cotton is one of the most important fibre crops playing a key role in economic and social affairs of the world. Water is a critical factor which influences on growth and yield of the cotton crop. Scarcity of water has put tremendous pressure on scientists to introduce drought tolerant cotton varieties. This study was aimed to determine water stress effects on the growth and yield of cotton. The present study was carried out to examine the effect of number of irrigations on the growth and yield of cotton during 2014. The field trial was conducted at the Experimental Fields of Agronomy Section, Agriculture Research Institute, Tandojam, Pakistan. A three replicated Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) was employed to layout the experiment having plot size of 2.5 m × 5 m (12.5 m2). Four cotton varieties i.e. NIAB-78, Shahbaz-95, Sindh-1 and TH-224/87 were chosen for this study based on their frequent farmer usage. All the agronomic practices were performed according to standard procedures. Results showed that all the growth and yield components of cotton were significantly (P < 0.01) affected by varieties and irrigation frequencies with exception of monopodial branches and staple length, which were not significantly (P > 0.05) affected by irrigation frequencies. The cotton crop irrigated six times at 21 days interval showed better results with 138.16 cm plant height, 1.45 monopodial branches per plant, 21.83 sympodial branches per plant, 44.58 bolls per plant, 33.86% G.O.T., and 26.97 mm staple length, 149.84 g seed cotton yield per plant and 2271.16 kg·ha^-1 seed cotton yield. This study concluded that variety NIAB-78 showed superiority over Shahbaz-95, Sindh-1 and TH-224/87 in almost all the characters of economic importance, and the cotton crop received 6 irrigations at 21 days interval resulted in significantly economical overall performance as compared with 5 irrigations or 4 irrigations with higher seed cotton yield.

Cotton Crop, Drought Stress, Tolerance, Yield

Sahito, A. , Baloch, Z. , Mahar, A. , Otho, S. , Kalhoro, S. , Ali, A. , Kalhoro, F. , Soomro, R. and Ali, F. (2015) Effect of Water Stress on the Growth and Yield of Cotton Crop (Gossypium hirsutum L.). American Journal of Plant Sciences, 6, 1027-1039. doi: 10.4236/ajps.2015.67108.