Abstract

Wheat is one of the key staple food crops supporting global food security. Unfortunately, wheat yield potential significantly declines due to inadequate growth and biomass production in response to unfavourable climate conditions. Thus, it is crucial to introduce cost-effective sustainable strategies to improve crop growth and yield processes. The objective of this experiment was to explore the impact of foliar-applied GA3 on the growth, biomass, and yield of wheat varieties. In this study, BWMRI Gom 1 showed the longer plant height, while BWMRI Gom 2 showed higher effective tillers per hill, leaf area index, and fresh biomass and dry biomass. The treatment 200 ppm GA3 showed the highest spike length (11.98 cm), spikelets per spike (17.85), spike weight (2.81 g), filled grains per spike (38.40), and 1000-grain weight (56.10 g), which resulted in maximum grain yield (4.44 t ha-1) in BWMRI Gom 2 compared to control plants. Therefore, supplementation of 200 ppm GA3 dose for enhancing growth and yield improvement is effective as the increased cell expansion, leaf area, and efficient translocation of assimilates from source to sink, ultimately improving grain filling ability and decreasing the number of unfilled grains. This study suggests a new insight into phytohormone-based sustainable agronomic traits improvement in wheat and other cereal crops.

Key words: Phytohormone, Biostimulant, Growth, Yield Trait, Wheat