effects of supplementary irrigation on yield and yield components of lentil (lens culinaris medik.) cultivars in mashhad climate

abstract supplementary irrigation for suitable crops production in most area of iran is necessary. in order to study supplementary irrigation effects on yield and yield components of three lentil (lens culinaris medik.) cultivars, an experiment was carried out as split block based on randomized complete block design with three replications at research field, college of agriculture, ferdowsi university of mashhad. in this study, irrigation treatments (including irrigation in all phenological stages; irrigation in branching, flowering, podding and seed setting stage, and without any irrigation in the growing period) as main plot, and three lentil cultivars (robat, kalpoosh and gachsaran) as sub plot were adjusted. results showed that irrigation had significant effects on number of pods per plant, 100 seed weight, grain and biological yield. maximum of these traits (except 100 seed weight) after complete irrigation treatment, was obtained at supplementary irrigation in flowering stage. supplementary irrigation in podding and seed setting stages increased 100 seed weight as compared to irrigation in flowering stage. in without-irrigation treatment, the gachsaran cultivar produced maximum grain yield. irrigation in flowering stage increased yield of robat, kalpoosh and gachsaran cultivars more than 60, 60 and 39% relative to the without-irrigation treatment, respectively. based on the results, supplementary irrigation in flowering stage was more effective in increasing number of pods per plant and lentil yield.