Effect of Different Super-Absorbent Polymer (SAP) Rates on Vegetative Growth and Forage Characteristics of Some Cereal Crops

• Ibrahim Salim Ismael1 Fathi Abdulkareem Omer2

  Author

The experiment was undertaken to estimate the effect of four rates (0, 15, 30, 45) kg/donum-1 of super-absorbent polymer (SAP) on vegetative traits, fresh and dry herbage yield kg/ha-1, of three cereals forage crops include; barley, oat and triticale. The study was located in the University of Duhok, Collage of Agricultural Engineering Sciences, farm of field crops department. The results showed that, the most of studied traits demonstrated no significantly affected by SAP, except the flag leaf area at SAP rate15 kg/donum-1 and fresh herbage yield at SAP rate 30 kg/dunam-1, which revealed significantly increased and gave the best records comparing with control and other rates. However, the rest of vegetative traits indicated that no significantly affected by SAP rates. The study was done under suitable temperatures and high level of precipitation throughout the growing season as showed in table (1). This study showed that, the different rates of SAP had limit influences on the most of vegetative traits of those forage cereal crops. Therefore, SAP application appears to be more suitable and functionally effective under arid and semiarid conditions than in regions where rainfall is sufficient during the growing season.

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