YIELD COMPONENTS AND YIELD OF WHEAT (Triticum aestivum L.) VARIETIES AS INFLUENCED BY PLANTING DATE

An experiment was conducted at the Agronomy Field of Bangladesh Agricultural University (BAU), Mymensingh from October 2009 to March 2010 to study the effect of planting date on yield components and yield of four varieties of wheat seeds. The experiment comprised of four planting dates such as 10 November, 20 November, 30 November and 10 December and four varieties of wheat viz. BARI Gom 24, BARI Gom 23, BARI Gom 22 and BARI Gom 21. The experiment was laid out in a randomized complete block design with three replications. Observations were made on grain yield and yield component parameters of wheat. The research results revealed that the effect of variety and planting date was significant in respect of yield and most of the plant characters. Among the four wheat varieties, the highest grain yield (3.84t ha-1) was found in BARI Gom 23, which was mainly due to its higher number (5.83) of effective tillers plant-1 and the lowest grain yield (3.12 t ha-1) was recorded from BARI Gom 21. Incase of Planting date, the highest grain yield (3.89 t ha-1) was obtained from 10 November plantingi. e early November, mainly contributed by its highest number (22.17) of spikelets spike-1 and heavier (48.13 g) 1000 grain weight. On the other hand, lowest grain yield (3.41t ha-1) was observed in 10 December planting. The interaction effect of planting date and variety showed significant variations on most of the plant characters and yield component parameters of wheat. The results of the experiment indicated that all the varieties gave higher yield with 10 November planting compared to the planting on other dates used in the study and overall the variety BARI Gom 23 yielded the highest grain (3.91 t ha-1) among the four varieties.