Effects of different soil water content on stomata development and water consumption of maize
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DOI:10.7606/j.issn.1000-7601.2011.03.14
Key Words: water stress  maize  stomata development  water transpiration consumption
Author NameAffiliation
CHEN Qianqian College of Life ScienceNortwest A & F University Yangling, Shaanxi 712100China 
FAN Yangyang College of Life ScienceNortwest A & F University Yangling, Shaanxi 712100China 
HAO Yingbin College of Life ScienceNortwest A & F University Yangling, Shaanxi 712100China 
LIU Xiping College of Life ScienceNortwest A & F University Yangling, Shaanxi 712100China 
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Abstract:
      In this study, potted maize was subjected to three grades of soil water content, and we observed and compared stoma density,stoma open, stoma length and width of new developing leaves, and assayed the effects of different soil water content on stomatal conductance, water transpiration consumption and biomass of different organs. The ex-periment results showed that the decrease of soil water content led to an increase of the stomatal density and a decrease of the stomatal conductance. The reduction of stoma width under soil drought stress was more significant than the length. The mild water stress and medium water stress resulted in a decrease in water transpiration consumption by about 16.3% and 36.9%,while the biomass decreased by 17.8% and 40. 2%,whereas root/ shoot ratio increased by 5.9% and 17.7%. Under mild water stress and moderate water stress, compared to control, the yield of maize decreased by 3.92% and 69.6%, while the water use eficiency increased by 13.6% and decreased 51.8% respectively. This re-search indicated that mild soil water stress increased the water use efficiency in the case of no reduction of corn yield , whereas the medium water stress decreased the yield significantly,and tasseling stage is the period at which the daily water consumption was the maximum.