| Abstract |
The season of 1976-77 started with excellent prospects for another record crop for Algeria and ended up as one of the worst. Preseeding rainfall was excellent and at times too much in the east and this hindered proper land preparations. As a result in many places in the eastern zone wheats were seeded up to the last part of January. The rains stopped all together towards the later part of December, and the drought continued up to April. Early seeded wheats had bad infestation of weeds, especially wild oats while the late seeded wheats although the weeds were low did not develop enough secondary root system and hence very poor tillering. Warm weather in February and March advanced the wheat faster than usual. April on-wards almost all the regio received much above average rainfall. This came too late for the early wheat to develop maximum density, since it was already in late shooting or boot stage. Most of the cereal areas had a 4 to 5 days of heavy frost during mid April. This caused considerable damage to the early seeded wheats. Thus combination of drought and frost rendered unrecoverable damage to most of the cereals during the cropping year of 1976-77. Barley was the worst affected of all the cereals. Many fields of wheat seeded after fallow in late November and December were able to withstand the drought much better than other due to the availability of more stored moisture. Also the yield of late seeded wheats and very late varieties were good due to the late rains and lack of prolonged hot periods in May and June. Stripe rust started to develop fairly early in the season in the eastern zones on Siete Cerros. But the warm weather conditions of February and March prevented heavy infection of the spike. However the damage due to the disease was considerable and the yield levels of Siete Cerros was reduced to almost the level of Florence Aurore. Some stripe rust on Anz a was also noticed in this region indicating the possibility of a newer race which can attack Anza. Stem rust and leaf rust although present never did develop into major epedamic proportions. Septoria was almost non excistant except on some bottom leaves of early planted wheats. |
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