Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
TABLE 9.1
(Continued)
Vegetable crops
Critical period for watering
Impact of water stress
Leafy vegetables
Throughout growth and develop-
ment
of plant
Toughness of leaves, poor fo-
liage growth, accumulation of
nitrates
Asparagus
Spear production and fern (foliage)
development
Reduce spear quality through
reduced spear size and in-
creased fiber content, leading
to tougher, lower grade spears.
Lettuce
Consistently throughout develop-
ment
Toughness of leaves, poor
plant growth, tip burning
Vegetable pea
Flowering and pod filling
Reduction in root nodulation
and plant growth, poor pod
filling, poor seed viability
Lima bean
Pollination and pod development
Leaf color takes on a slight
grayish cast, blossom drop,
poor seed viability
Snap bean
Flowering and pod enlargement
Blossoms drop with inade-
quate moisture levels and pods
fail to fill, poor seed viability
Sweet corn
Silking, tasseling and ear develop-
ment
Crop may tassel and shed pol-
len before silks on ears are
ready for pollination, lack of
pollination may result in miss-
ing rows of kernels, reduced
yields, or even eliminate ear
production, poor seed viability
Sweet potato
Root enlargement
Reduced root enlargement
with poor yield, growth crack
Source:
Bahadur
et al. (2011); Kumar et al. (2012).
The identification of suitable plant characters for screening large num-
bers of genotypes, in a short time at critical stages of crop growth, with
the aim of selecting drought tolerant cultivars, remains a major challenge
to the plant breeders. Drought tolerance is the interactive result of diverse
morphological, physiological and biochemical traits and thus, these com-
ponents could be used as strong selection criteria to screen out appropriate
plant ideotypes. Implications of developing an effective screening procedure
