Crop water stress index relationship with soybean seed, protein and oil yield under varying irrigation regimes in a Mediterranean environment

A two-year field experiment was conducted to determine the effect of water stress, including Crop Water Stress Index (CWSI), on seed, protein and oil yields, for two hybrids of drip-irrigated soybean in Central Greece. The experiment was set up as a split plot design with four replicates, five main plots (irrigation treatments) and two sub-plots (soybean hybrids, ‘PR91M10’ and ‘PR92B63’). Irrigation was applied to provide 100, 75, 50 and 25% of the crop evapotranspiration needs and 0% non-irrigated. Biomass weight, seed yield, oil and protein concentration were measured after harvest. To compute CWSI, lower and upper baselines were developed based on the canopy temperature measurements of I100 and I0 treatments, respectively. Deficit irrigation had a significant effect on biomass, seed, protein and oil yields. Hybrid PR92B63 was more responsive to irrigation and showed higher biomass, seed protein and oil yields, while the more sensitive hybrid PR91M10 had the ability to maintain productivity with increasing degrees of water stress. The rain-fed treatments significantly reduced biomass production and seed yield compared with the fully-irrigated ones. The highest and the lowest protein and oil yields were obtained in the I100 and I0 treatments respectively in both years and cultivars. Statistically significant exponential relationships were determined between CWSI and biomass, seed, protein and oil yields. Generally, CWSI could be used to measure crop water status and to improve irrigation scheduling of the crop and 0.10 for PR92B63 and 0.19 for PR91M10 could be offered as threshold values under the climatic conditions of the region.