Evaluation of superabsorbent polymer effect on water use efficiency and yield response factor of corn plant under deficit irrigation

Deficit irrigation is an optimum technique for producing products under drought stress with a decrease of products per area and an increase of them with the extent of the area. Given the large share of water use in the agriculture sector and very low efficiencies, the selection and development of the new strategies to improve and optimize irrigation water use with significant savings in this sector are essential. The usage of deficit irrigation and superabsorbent polymers are valuable strategies. This research was planned to study the effect of drought stress and different levels of superabsorbent polymer (super AB and A 200) and their effect on water use efficiency (WUE) and yield response factor (Ky). The experimental site was an agricultural land with sandy soil in the Hamidieh region near Ahwaz city. In this study, three different depths of irrigation were considered as the main treatment I1, I2, I3 as 100, 75, and 50 percent of water requirement of plants respectively, and different levels of superabsorbent were used as secondary treatment (S0, S1, S2, and S3, equal to 0 (control), 15, 30 and 45 gr/m2 respectively). According to the results, the independent effect of irrigation and superabsorbent treatments at 1% level and interaction between them at 1% level on WUE of corn were significant. I1S3 treatment had the most WUE amount (16.18 kg/ha.mm), and I3S0 treatment had the least WUE amount (6.48 kg/h.mm). Also, using superabsorbent polymers, variations of the relative yield decrease toward variations of the relative evapotranspiration deficit had a low correlation, and achieved points had low R2.