EFFECT OF UV RADIATION ON WHEAT PRODUCTIVITY UNDER WATER DEFICIT IRRIGATION

Water Scarcity and increasing ultraviolet radiation, especially UV-B and C bands, are direct affects of both negative climate change phenomenon and environmental pollution. Both functioned individually or synergically resulting stress in plants. Deficit irrigation and biophysical applications can be implemented to optimize the use of available water resources and increase productivity per unit area to achieve self-sufficiency of strategic crops. Pretreatedsoft wheat seeds cv. Gmeza 11 by three UV- bands UV-BS (A, B and C) with approximately dose (2.9×103mJ cm-2 ± 50), were grown till maturity on pot experiment under the winter spring of 2022/2023 season. Their response was evaluated in terms of biomass components, harvest and seed indexes, and some spike parameters, under three water deficit WD percentage 100, 85, 70% (W1,W2 and W3) of ETC, using split plot design. Moreover, some financial, technical and economic indicators for the efficiency of irrigation water were computed. Results affirmed that, all parameters had a stimulatory significant effect (P ≤ 0.05) with current studied treatments. They affected positively following UV-C, B, and A, as well as, 70, 85 and 100%. This effect may be caused individually or as a result of the interaction between them. Meanwhile, the irrigation water productivity IWP has an opposite proportion with WD, and direct proportion with UV- BS. Thehighest values of parameters were recorded with fully irrigation, 100% & UV-A treatment, except for IWP and irrigation water return IWR. In contrast, the lowest values were recorded at 70% &UV-C treatment, except for IWP. The results concluded that, the deficit percentage might not be increased more than 15% and UV wavelength might not be less than315nm. While the profit rate reached 61.04% at UV-A&W1 treatment. The economic indicators, e.g., IWR and crop requirement, have a negative correlation with both UV-BS and WD.