Physiological Response of Eggplants Grown Under Different Irrigation Regimes to Antitransplant Treatments

Eggplants were grown under four irrigation regimes relevant to 100, 80, 60 or 40% of evapotranspiration (ET) values and treated with film-forming vapor gard or reflcetive-typy white wash anti-transpirants (ATs) in order to examine there effects on different physiological parameters, growth, transpiration, relative water content (RWC), total carbohydrates, water use efficiency (WUE) and yield. Results revealed that all growth parameters, chemical constituents and yield were strongly influenced by both irrigation regimes and ATs treatments. The irrigation regimes corresponding to 100% of ET alone or 80% of ET with ATs treatments gave the greatest effect on plant growth parameters, while high water stress treatments adversely affected the growth parameters. The ATs treatments particularly whitewash (WW) had favorable affect on the growth parameters under all levels of irrigation, but this effect was more obvious at lower levels of irrigation. Antitranspirant treatments reduced the transpiration rate, RWC, and carbohydrates were decreased by decreasing irrigation levels but ATs treatments had relieving effects of water stress and increased them. Both types of ATs increased the yield more than the control