The effects of withholding water from the newly-planted tobacco crop in north Queensland

Abstract

In experiments conducted over three seasons in the Mareeba district, irrigation was withheld from the newly planted tobacco crop for periods of from two to six weeks. The effect of withholding water was primarily to delay development. Beyond this, it had little effect on plant growth, neither stimulating rates of leaf expansion during recovery nor increasing the numbers of leaves produced, as it had done in earlier pot experiments. Effects on the yield of cured leaf were small. The six-week delay produced the lowest yield in each season, but the reduction was small and not significant statistically. The failure of the delayed irrigation treatments to reproduce the beneficial response reported in earlier work was attributed to the over-riding effect of the severe water stresses associated with the transplanting process.