Growth responses of home grown barley (hordeum vulgare)‎, lettuce (lactuca sativa)‎, Swiss chards (beta vulgaris)‎ and faba beans (vicia faba)‎ to sunlight and shade

Abstract EN

Four experiments were conducted at research field, Agric.

College, Samawa, Iraq during 2017-2018 growing season to investigate the growth responses of barley, lettuce, Swiss chards, and faba beans to natural sunlight and shaded sunlight.

Barley plants grown under natural sunlight significantly exceeded these grown under shaded sunlight in leaf length (7.569% ), leaf width (94.74% ), leaf numbers (68.75% ), tillers (33.33% ), leaf fresh weight (325% ), leaf dry weight (298.91% ) and chlorophyll content of leaves (28.09% ).

Natural sunlight grown lettuce manifested substantially higher leaf length (11.5 cm), leaf width (3.75cm), leaf fresh weight (2.625g), leaf dry weight (0.875g).

However, it gave significantly lower leaf number per plant (4.75).

Swiss chards grown under natural sunlight highly exceeded these of shade grown in terms of leaf fresh weight, leaf dry weight and chlorophyll content of leaves, respectively by 42.37, 51.53 and 11% .

However, it manifested a reductions of 10.7% in leaf length.

Sunlight grown faba beans highly exceeded that shade grown in tiller leaves number per plant (30.77% ), branches number per plant (100% ), leaf fresh weight (16.17% ), leaf dry weight (16.59% ), and chlorophyll content of leaves (62.92).

On the other hand, shaded faba beans substantially by passed these grown under sunlight in terms of plant height (106.07% ), leaf length (9% ), leaf width (18.37% ).