Effect of different seeding rates on yield attributes of dual-purpose wheat

Growing more food is the need of the day for ever increasing populations of human and animals. Moreover, it is challenge for the agriculture scientists to increase food production by increasing yields. To increase wheat production by increasing yields per hectare an experiment was conducted at the Agricultural Research Institute, Dera Ismail Khan. In this experiment the performance of dual-purpose wheat under varying seeding rates was investigated. Five seed rate treatments (10, 140, 180 and 20 kg per ha) of wheat variety Zam-04 were planted as cut for forage and grain in one block and as grains (no cut) in another block. The data indicated that increasing seed rate, increased was observed in number of tillers m-2 (287), number of spike m-2 (281), biological yield (1690 kg per ha), fresh and dry forage yield (3961 and 832.6 kg per ha) and grain yield (4741 kg per ha) by increasing seeding densities while the reverse was observed for days to heading (12.5), number of grains per spike (58.9) and spike length (1.9cm). These parameters were higher in lower seed rate (10 kg per ha). Cutting wheat at 60 days after sowing negatively affected the number of tillers m-2 (241), 100-grain weight (38.65g) and biological yield (10252 kg per ha). Number of grains per spike, spike length, number of spikes m-2, plant height and grain yield were non-significantly affected by cutting treatments. Significant interaction of seeding rate x cutting was recorded for number of days to heading and number of spikes m-2. Hence it is concluded that dual-purpose wheat system, with 140 kg per ha seed rate, had higher ability of providing fodder in cold winter though it produced les grain yield as compared to no cut plots.