Effect of drought stress at vegetative stage
Drought stress was strongly affected on the morphology of the rice plant such as leaf area development and its may be hampered due to reduced leaf expansion, leaf rolling, and early senescence and tillering and panicle development (O'Toole and Cruz, 1980). The effective water deficit at any growth stage reduced plant height all varieties (Rahman et al., 2002). The reduction in leaf area index apparently reduced canopy photosynthetic rates by 13 33 percent, which reduced grain yield by 15 27 percent under water stress during vegetative stage (Cruz et al., 1986). The most frequent drought occurrence was observed to be at the vegetative growth stage around 58.4 percent, which 39.5 percent reported to occur at the tillering stage (Gypmantasari et al., 2003).