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Résistance à la sécheresse du sorgho-grain en climat méditerranéen et gestion optimale d’une quantité d’eau limitée Volume 4, issue 2, Juin 1993

Authors
Laboratoire d’agronomie et bioclimatologie, INRA, 2, place Viala, 34060 Montpellier Cedex 1, France, CEMAGREF, 261, rue J-F Breton, BP 5095, 34033 Montpellier Cedex, France.
  • Page(s) : 85-93
  • Published in: 1993

Sorghum bicolor Moench is a useful summer crop in southern France because of its high drought resistance and high capacity for using soil water. Field experiments were on deep soil carried out in Montpellier for three years, and compared various irrigation treatments and a dry control on a yearly basis. Application of water to the irrigated plots was stopped at different phenological stages of sorghum; another control was irrigated at MET. The field test enabled a number of methods used in crop water stress studies to be compared: tensiometry, neutron probing, crop canopy temperature, leaf water potential, energy balance (two methods) and also permitted many water stress indices to be calculated. The results obtained showed that sorghum (cv. Argence) was highly resistant to drought until the flowering stage. Grain yields varied from 10 t/ha (MET) to 5 t/ha (dry control) with a harvest index (grain/dry matter) close to or greater than 0,5.