A Sterile Hydroponic System for Characterizing Nitrogen Use Efficiency (NUE) and Plant Physiology of Bread Wheat

Abstract

Nitrogen fertilizer is a major input for cereal crop production around the world. The control of this resource is a significant challenge to most agricultural system as it can have significant effects on yield and the climate. In Agro-ecological system with intensive cropping it is the delimiting factor that reduces both quantity and quality of the crops. Chemical fertilizers (such as Urea) have been the main source of nitrogen since last 7 decades. Due to high solubility most of the fertilizer (~50-70%) is leached to underground water reserves. To tackle such a serious issue, there is a need of time to increase the efficiency of N uptake and its use for better crop production. The current research was been carried out to identify varieties that perform well in both nitrogen deficient and efficient environments. Eleven cultivars PAK-13, PARWAZ-94, PISBK-91, BAKHAR-2000, FSD-83, KOHNOOR-83, LASANI-2008, NARC-11, SA-42, SOKOLL and WAFAQ were grown in sterile hydroponic environment specially designed for this experiment. Hoagland solution in the sterile system was modified to make three treatments i.e. Control (100%), Treatment 1 (66%), and Treatment 2 (33%). Three replicates of eleven cultivars were grown to estimate physiological and morphological traits. Highly significant variation was observed in both between the cultivars and treatments (p<0.0001). Nitrogen content of the plant was estimated using micro- Kjeldahl apparatus. Nitrogen Use Efficiency (NUE) was estimated to identify cultivars (NARC-11, Sokoll and SA-42) having capacity to grow efficiently under limited nitrogen condition. Some cultivars (KOHINOOR-83, FSD-83, Bhakhar-2001 and PIRSBK-91) were susceptible to limited nitrogen regime. Overall, the results indicated that wheat cultivars responded well to N application with medium rate of application within experiments.