High temperature stress and its implication on growth, biomass and yield of normal and late seeded fieldpea genotypes

Abstract

Climatic factors serve as direct inputs to agriculture and any change in climatic factors is bound to have a significant impact on crop yields and production. Climate change may have the most influence on rain fed agriculture being rainfall dependent. Temperature is an important weather parameter which affects productivity of rainfed crops. Field experiments were conducted during rabi (winter) 2011-12 and 2012-2013 at Indian Institute of Pulses Research, Kanpur involving fifteen fieldpea genotypes (sown under normal and late condition) to study the effect of temperature stress on the crop. The crop was monitored through membrane stability index, plant height at podding, total biological yield, seed yield and harvest index, which showed significant variation with seeding dates, genotypes, and their interactive effects. Crop  was  exposed  to  higher  temperature  during flowering and seed filling stages which induced reduction in mean membrane stability index (28.8%), plant height (60.2%), total biomass yield (61.7%), seed yield (68.9%) and harvest index (19.3%). The mean yield stability index was 80.7%. On the basis of minimum reduction in observed traits, fieldpea genotypes, KPF103 and DMR 15, had comparatively higher amount of tolerence towards high temperature stress while IPFD 99-7, IPFD 3-17, IPFD 2-6, IPFD 1-10 were moderately tolerance to high temperature stress since these had more than 75.0% yield stability index.