Wheat (T. aestivum) has a crucial role for human diet especially in developing countries. Changes in precipitation intensity, amounts and patterns restrict wheat growth and productivity under rainfed conditions. Thus, assessment of drought effects during growth stages of wheat on grain yield and quality traits has substantial importance. Grain filling stage, coincides with early spring when the rainfall pattern highly variable, was considered in this study to evaluate effects of drought conditions on yield and quality of 16 wheat genotypes and determine superior varieties. Drought treatment inhibited plant height (5.5 %), 1000 grain weight (9.2 %) and grain yield (17.7 %) while harvest index increased (8.5 %). However, there was no significant effect of drought conditions on grains number spike -1 and spike numbers m -2 . Protein content increased (31.6 %) in all genotypes, while the Zeleny sedimentation significantly decreased (8.2 %) with drought treatments during both growing seasons. Cultivars Pandas and Meta had higher grain yield under drought stress in both years whereas Line-28 and Pandas had better quality properties.

Wheat, being the main crop in Mediterranean type environments, is grown during winter under rainfed conditions and its yield potential is mostly affected by the amount and distribution of rain. This study is conducted at experimental fields of Ege University, Department of Field Crops in Izmir-Bornova which is characterized as Mediterranean type climate conditions during 2011/2012 and 2012/2013 growing season. Totally 9 canopy structures were generated by different row and line distances. Plant height, total dry weight, tiller number, harvest index, spike number, grain number per spike, thousand grain weight and grain yield were determined after harvest time while digital leaf area index and soil moisture contents were monitoring during specific growth periods to evaluate changes in soil water status by different canopy closer. Increasing in sowing density by different row and in-line distance reduced tiller and spike number per plant. On the other hand, grain number per spike and thousand grain weights were significantly affected by in-line distance instead of row distance. Higher grain yield were obtained from 20x1 cm treatments. Canopy cover speed determined using with digital imaging was not remarkable correlated (r=0.06) with soil moisture content during post-anthesis stage of wheat when higher rain amount is recorded in 2012. However, there was a significant negative correlation (r=0.51) between canopy cover speed and soil water status during post-anthesis stage when the rain amount is limited in 2013. We may suggest that rapid canopy cover lead to negative effect on soil water status via higher transpiration if the rain is limited during post-anthesis stage of wheat.

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