Boron Efficiency in a Wheat Germplasm from Bangladesh

Abstract

Wheat production in Bangladesh has grown from about 32,000 tons from 60,000 ha in 1961 to almost 2 million tons from 800,000 ha by the year 2000. Wheat has contributed significantly to the country’s food security. Bangladesh wheat crop, however, often suffers from the problem of grain set failure. Boron (B) deficiency has been identified as one major cause of this problem. Soils on which wheat is grown in Bangladesh commonly contain 0.1−0.3 mg hot water soluble B kg⁻¹ (HWS B), at which B deficiency has been shown to cause grain set failure through male sterility (Li et al 1978; Rerkasem and Loneragan 1994). On the other hand, wheat genotypes have been shown to respond differently to low B (Rerkasem and Jamjod, 1997). This study evaluated a set of wheat varieties and advanced breeding lines from Bangladesh national breeding program to assess their response to B in two experiments conducted at Chiang Mai University, Thailand.