Grain weight responses to post-anthesis spikelet-trimming in an old and a modern wheat under Mediterranean conditions

Average grain weight is a major yield component contributing to its variation, especially in Mediterranean regions where grain weight is frequently exposed to terminal stresses affecting grain growth. Most of the literature agrees that wheat grain growth is hardly limited by the source. However, no source–sink ratios studies seem to have been conducted in the Mediterranean region to determine to what degree wheat grain growth is actually limited by the source in these particular regions. We conducted two field experiments in Catalonia (north-eastern Spain), where an old cultivar (Anza) and a more recently released one (Soissons) were sown in a range of different nitrogen and water availabilities and sowing dates. This was to analyse the degree of source limitation for grain growth. Sink size was modified by removing half of the spikelets c. 10 days after anthesis, virtually doubling the availability of assimilates per grain effectively growing.

Trimming the spikes did not produce significant changes in grain growth rate or duration of grain filling. Consequently, grain weight did not respond noticeably to the reduction in sink demand and any eventual response has been far from representing a strong competition among grains during grain filling.