The treatment had a significant effect on the mean rooting depth (RD) (P = 0.02). For the same depth of tillage, RD was deeper for the rain-fed treatment than for the irrigated treatment (26.3 cm and 21.9 cm for DR and DI, respectively; 21.4 cm and 16.5 cm for SR and SI, respectively – see Table 1 for the list of treatment abbreviations). The water availability indicator (WI) dynamics differed significantly between treatments (ANOVA with repeated observations: P = 0.005) ( Fig. 3b). WI averaged over the cycle decreased between treatments with the following ranking: DI > SI > DR > SR ( Table 6). Leaf area index (LAI) dynamics differed significantly between treatments (ANOVA with repeated observations: P = 0.001) ( Fig. 3a). LAI dynamics was the slowest in SR and the fastest in DI, with the same ranking between treatments as WI averaged over the cycle. The treatment also had a significant effect on the date of flowering and BG at flowering ( Table 7): DI flowered the earliest and produced the biggest plants, while SR flowered the latest and produced the smallest plants.