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Foliar application of Atonik (sodium nitrophenolate) at crop critical growth stages is expected to improve crop physiology, morphology, and productivity. The present field study was conducted at the University of Agriculture, Faisalabad in autumn season of 2018 and 2019. Water deficit conditions were imposed by skip irrigation method. Plants were treated with foliar application of Atonik 10 (mg L−1) to evaluate the physiological, morphological, yield, and yield causative attributes of maize grown under deficit irrigation treatments. Randomized complete block design (RCBD) with split plots arrangement was used to layout the experiment having three replications. It was revealed that application of Atonik improved the crop's physiological attributes: relative leaf water contents (RLWC by 10%), chlorophyll contents (14%), and carotenoids content (15%) under water deficit conditions. Similarly, Atonik application augmented the leaf length at maturity, the number of green leaves at harvesting, and the number of grains row−1 of maize by 7%, 20% and 12%, respectively. Moreover, the application of Atonik amended the 100-grains weight, grain yield, and biological yield by 8%, 9% and 20%, respectively. In crux, application of Atonik is an excellent strategy to alleviate the detrimental influence of water deficit on physiological, morphological, and yield causative attributes of maize. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mepiquat chloride (MC) is a plant growth regulator used to manage the rampant vegetative growth of cotton. A two-year field experiment was conducted at the Postgraduate Agricultural Research Station, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan, during 2017 and 2018 to investigate the influence of MC applied at different times on phenology, morphology, lint yield and quality of cotton cultivated using different sowing techniques. MC was applied 50 days after sowing (DAS), 60 DAS and 70 DAS to cotton planted in flat fields (flat sowing), ridges (ridge sowing) and beds (bed sowing). The interactive effect of MC application time and sowing technique did not influence crop phenology, morphology, and lint yield and quality. It was revealed that the crop planted on beds took fewer days to flower (10%) as compared to that on the flat field, and the bed-sown crop produced a higher number of opened bolls (60%) and was characterized by a higher boll weight (32%) and seed cotton yield (50%) in comparison to the flat-sown crop. A late application of MC (at 70 DAS) caused a significant reduction in the time to flowering (8%), with a simultaneous increase in the number of opened bolls (60%), boll weight (32%), ginning out turn (8%) and lint yield (27%) as compared to MC application at 50 DAS. In terms of lint quality, cotton planted on beds had better fiber uniformity (8%) compared to that on the flat field, while MC applied at 70 DAS produced better fiber fineness by 27% in comparison to MC applied earlier. Overall, cotton planting on beds and MC application at 70 DAS may help improve cotton yield and fiber quality and may help in the mechanical picking of cotton. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]