YIELD AND SEED QUALITY OF BARLEY AND WHEAT IN GLASSHOUSE AND FIELD CONDITIONS

Two experiments were carried out underfield conditions; one was conducted in winter-spring (FEWS) growing season under irrigation and another experiment was conducted under rainfall conditions in the summer (FES), while a third experiment was carried out in green house conditions in the summer (GES), in order to study the environmental effects in grain yield (GY) and seed quality between barley and bread wheat. In the combined analysis of the experiments carried out under field conditions, the results showed that the barley had 21, 31, 28 y 22% higher grain yield. (GY), above-ground dry matter (AGDM), number of spikes/m(2), number of grains/m(2) (NGPSM), respectively, with respect to wheat. Barley plantlets were 6cm higher and reached its larger yield 18 days before those of wheat, although wheat showed an 11% larger harvest index (HI) than barley. GY, HI, AGDM, NGPSM and plant height all decrease in FES for barley in 30, 29, 2, 12% and 25cm, respectively, and for wheat in 38, 10, 32, 27% and 32cm, respectively, compare with FEWS. The number of days to anthesis was 28 days and 46 days before in FES than in FEWS, respectively, in barley and wheat. Also, in GES barley was better than the wheat on GY and AGDM in 17 and 33%, respectively. Barley showed a better seed quality than wheat in plantlet vigor whereas wheat plantlets showed 10 and 23% larger germination and volumetric weight, respectively.