Industrial Crops and Products

Volume 66, April 2015, Pages 81–88

Alternate wetting and drying irrigation-mediated changes in the growth, photosynthesis and yield of the medicinal plant Tulipa edulis

• Yuanyuan Miao^a,
• Zaibiao Zhu^a,
• Qiaosheng Guo^{a, ,} ,
• Hongliang Ma^{a, b},
• Lifang Zhu^a

 

doi:10.1016/j.indcrop.2014.12.002

Get rights and content

---

Highlights

•

Tulipa edulis is a high value raw material, used for the treatment of a variety of tumors, especially breast cancer.

•

Tulipa edulis under alternate wetting and drying regime showed a comparable capacity for growth and photosynthesis to the well-watered treatment.

•

Alternate wetting and drying regime saved 25.09% irrigation water input with comparable total bulb yield and improved water productivity by 21.21% compared with well-watered treatment.

---

Abstract

Tulipa edulis is an important medicinal plant with a variety of anti-cancer properties. There is an urgent need to reduce water consumption in T. edulis under greenhouse cultivation. A greenhouse experiment was performed to study the effect of well-watered (80% of field capacity, Control), persistent drought (50% of field capacity, D) and alternate wetting and drying (50% and 80% of field capacity, AWD) regimes on the growth traits, photosynthetic pigment contents, chlorophyll fluorescence parameters, photosynthetic characteristics and yield of T. edulis. The results showed that compared with the well-watered control, persistent drought inhibited plant growth and yields dramatically, presumably due to the significantly lower photosynthetic rate caused by a decrease in photosynthetic pigments and a reduced chlorophyll fluorescence efficiency (Fv/Fm, Fv/F0). In contrast, the AWD plants showed a capacity for photosynthesis comparable to the well-watered control, which could be associated with similar photosynthetic pigment levels and chlorophyll fluorescence parameters (Fv/Fm, Fv/F0). AWD reduced the irrigation water input by 25.09% while leading to comparable yields and increased water productivity by 21.21% compared with the well-watered control. The results suggested that an alternate wetting and drying (50% and 80% of field capacity) regime can be an effective means of saving water, promoting bulb production, and improving water production for T. edulis.

Keywords

• Tulipa edulis;
• Persistent drought;
• Alternate wetting and drying;
• Photosynthesis;
• Chlorophyll fluorescence

Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 25 84395980; fax: +86 25 84395980.

Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.