Investigation of seed aging and plant density effect on yield and yield components of wheat (CV. Chamran) in Khouzestan climate conditions

In order to investigate the effect of seed aging and plant density on yield and yield components of wheat (CV. Chamran), an experiment was conducted in 2010-2011 cropping year in Agricultural Research Center of Safi-Abad (Dezful).The experiment was factorial with randomized complete block design with three replications. The treatments consisting of seed aging in five levels (control, 48 , 72 , 96 and 110 hr) and plant density (300 , 350 , 400 and 450 plant m2).The results showed that seed aging decreased field indices as grain number per spike, spike density, harvest index, biological and grain yield. The mean comparison of aging simple effect showed that the highest (4179 kg ha-1) and the lowest (3166 kg ha-1) grain yield belonged to control treatment and treatment with 110 hr seed aging, respectively. The effect of plant density on the traits such as spike density, 1000-grain weight, biological yield and harvest index was significant, too. In addition, the correlation between grain yield and biological yield, harvest index, spike density and 1000-grain weight was positive. In this study, observed that temperature and seed aging duration are the most important factors that influence the occurrence and progression of seed aging. Hence, the development of seed aging with increasing temperature and its implementation duration is predictable.