Effects of different drought Stress treatments on some morphological characteristics of Fortuynia bungei Boiss.

Fortuynia bungei Boiss. is one of the most important range plant species that is widely distributed throughout the arid and semi-arid regions. In order to assess the effect of different water stress treatments on some morphological characteristics of F. bungei, an experiment with three replicates in a completely randomized design (CRD) was conducted at the Natural Resources and Agricultural Research Station in Yazd province. The water stress treatments included 100, 50 and 25% of field capacity (FC). The results showed that plant height, crown diameter, canopy cover volume, leaf length, total leaf surface, number and length of main and secondary branches, the branch/leaf ratio, leaf area index (LAI), shoot as well as root dry weight significantly (p<0.01) were affected by soil moisture content. At 100% FC, maximum plant height, crown diameter and canopy cover (40.33 cm, 28.16 cm, and 134110.4 cm3, respectively) were obtained, whereas the minimum amounts of these three parameters (28.87cm, 12.38cm, and 18656.6 cm3, respectively) were observed at 25% FC. The maximum (9.86) and minimum (5.5) branch/leaf ratio were obtained at the 50% and 100% FC, respectively. Water stress had no significant effect on morphological characteristics such as root/shoot ratio and leaf thickness. In general, these results indicate that F. bungei can tolerate dry conditions by reducing height, crown diameter, canopy cover volume, number and length of branches, shoot dry weight and also by increasing branch/leaf ratio. Nevertheless, sufficient water supplement is required to use its potential for forage production as well as ornamental capacity.