الفهرس 
INTRODUCTIONOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
 |  | from | 165 |  |  |
| | | from | 165 | | |
Abstract
This work was carried out to investigate the efficiency of some improving quality agents (glutathione and effective microorganisms) to overcome the harmful effect of water deficit on growth parameters and reproductive characters as well as some physiological and chemical aspects of gladiolus plants growing under surface and subsurface drip irrigation. The effect of different levels of water supply and glutathione concentrations was investigated in the first experiment while the influence of effective microorganisms application under severe water stress conditions was studied in the second experiment. Results showed that decreasing the amount of irrigation water from 1882 to 1129 m3/fad. significantly reduced plant height, number of leaves and total leaf area per plant as well as fresh and dry weight of leaves per plant. The same trend could be noticed regarding flowering and cormels production except for flowering date and vase life. Also, the photosynthetic pigments content, water content and total carbohydrates content as well as nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium concentrations in the leaf tissues were significantly reduced with decreasing the amount of irrigation water. On the contrary, the osmotic pressure of the cell sap and proline content exhibited a remarkable increase with increasing drought stress. Foliar application of glutathione and effective microorganisms promoted all the aforementioned growth parameters and reproductive characters in this study, as well as chemical constituents compared with untreated plants. The results suggest that foliar application of glutathione (400 ppm) and EM1 (1 cm3/l) at 30 and 60 days after planting could be used to improve drought tolerance and economic yield of gladiolus plants. Furthermore, there was a little difference between the values of the above mentioned characters studied in gladiolus plants irrigated by surface and subsurface drip irrigation.