Analysis of growth, development and yield in a spacing experiment with winter rye (Secale cereals L.).

Abstract

It was concluded from an experiment with Petkus winter rye sown at 7 seed rates in the range 5-180 kg/ha that: (1) crop analysis facilitated the interpretation of yield analysis; (2) crop analysis can be confined to the counting of plants at tillering, of ears during heading and of florets per ear after anthesis, and to determinations of either dry weight or of N or chlorophyll contents per unit soil area, per plant or per organ; (3) tillering was able to compensate for lower plant densities until 1.5 dm² of space per plant was reached; (4) at decreasing seed rates, the rate of development decreased, while the number of florets per ear, floret fertility and rate and duration of grain filling increased; (5) the number of florets per ear, their fertility and grain filling depended on the nutritive conditions during tillering and shooting, at about the time of anthesis, and during ripening, respectively; (6) there were close correlations between the amount of N and of chlorophyll in the aerial parts and the logarithm of plant or culm space, indicating that the relative space per plant or per culm rather than the absolute space per plant or per culm was the determining factor; (7) grain weight and total weight per culm increased proportionally with logarithm of culm space and, hence, yield per unit area showed an optimum value at a culm density of about 2.7 x 10⁶ culms per ha; (8) dry-matter distribution in the culms was largely independent of the size and the nutritive conditions of the culms, grain weight always being about 30% of total weight.-A.G.G.H. (Abstract retrieved from CAB Abstracts by CABI’s permission)