Effects of Irrigation Levels on Growth and Development of the Groundcovers Moss Rose (Portulaca grandiflora) and Ice Plant (Carpobrotus aciniformis)

For sustainable development and optimized water use, effect of drought stress on two groundcovers namely mose rose and ice plant was studied. Irrigation treatments were field capacities of 25, 50, 75 and 100 percent which were applied for two months on the established one month old plants. After the mentioned period of time vegetative traits were measured and in case of mose rose number of flowers were counted and ANOVA was conducted. The results indicated that the plant type (species), treatments (the applied drought stress levels) and their interactions had significant effects on the traits of shoot length, leaf number, fresh weight, dry weight, chlorophyll index and flower number (in case of mose rose). The ice plant was more efficient than mose rose for the most of measured traits. Also significant differences were observed for these parameters in applied irrigation levels. The flower number in mose rose was significantly affected by irrigation level. Although the sever stresses caused significant decrease of growth rate in these groundcovers but they tolerated and survived even at 25% FC of irrigation and in some cases there was not significant differences between 50 and 75 percent of FC. So in order to water conservation and have a landscape with healthy and acceptable plants from landscape users’ viewpoint the irrigation amount could be reduced to 50% of field capacity for these plants.