| In order to investigate the effects of different degrees and frequencies of drought exercise on physiological indices, yield and water use efficiency of winter wheat, and to screen out a reasonable drought exercise mode, the experiment used Xiaoyan 22 as the experimental material, and set up two levels of drought stress(mild drought stress W1: 50%-60% FC; moderate drought stress W2: 40%-50% FC, where FC is the field capacity) and two drought exercise modes(single drought exercise and repeated drought exercise). Seven treatments were conducted,including W1 at heading stage(ND-1), W2 at heading stage (ND-2), tillering stage W1 + heading stage W1(D-1), tillering stage W2 + heading stage W2(D-2), W1 and repeated drought exercise at tillering stage + W1 at heading stage (DRD-1), and W2 and repeated drought exercise at tillering stage + W2 at heading stage (DRD-2), using the full water supply(CK, 70%~80% FC) during the whole life span as the control treatment. The effects of drought exercise on photosynthesis-related indices, antioxidant protection, osmoregulatory substances, yield and water use efficiency were investigated and analyzed through a pot cultivation experiment. The results showed that compared with CK, winter wheat yield under ND-1 and ND-2 significantly reduced by 13.9% and 21.2%, respectively, and their water use efficiency reduced all by 5.9%; the net photosynthetic rate, stomatal conductance, transpiration rate, photosynthetic activity, heat dissipation capacity, chlorophyll a and chlorophyll b contents of winter wheat increased 13.7%, 31.4%, 24.7%, 1.4%, 5.0%, 2.7% and 4.7% under D-1, respectively, and the indexes of DRD-1 increased 14.9%, 36.1%, 27.1%, 2.3%, 5.1%, 12.0% and 13.0%, respectively. Compared with ND-1, the reaction rate of superoxide dismutase, proline soluble and sugar production were significantly accelerated under D-1 and DRD-1 with the increasing range of 19.7%, 68.3% and 31.8 percentage points under D-1, 24.0%,76.0% and 34.3 percentage points under DRD-1, and the peroxidase activity significantly reduced 8.3% and 10.3% under the two treatments, and drought again at the heading stage did not significantly affect the net photosynthetic rate, light energy conversion efficiency, photochemical quenching coefficient, and photosynthetic pigment content of winter wheat. Therefore, superoxide dismutase activity and proline can be used to evaluate the drought tolerance of winter wheat, and the mild drought exercise improved the drought tolerance of winter wheat. The effect of drought exercise on winter wheat yield increase ranked as mild drought exercise > moderate drought exercise, and repeated drought exercise > single drought exercise > no drought exercise, in which mild single and repeated drought exercise at the tillering stage significantly increased the yield of winter wheat by 5.7% and 11.4%, and water use efficiency by 8.7% and 10.9%, respectively. Taken together, it was concluded that mild repeated drought exercise at tillering stage was a reasonable deficit regulation irrigation measure to improve drought tolerance, yield and water use efficiency of winter wheat. |