Indian Journal of Agricultural Research

An investigation was carried out involving two barley varieties V₁ (DWRUB 52) and V₂ (PL 807) grown on three different sowing windows viz. D₁ (25^th October), D₂ (10^th November), D₃ (25^th November) and three irrigation levels such as I₁ (Recommended), I₂ (Stress at vegetative stage) and I₃ (Stress at anthesis period) to study the effect of changed microenvironmenton differentbiophysical indicators andyield ofbarley during rabi 2016–17 at Ludhiana. Both leaf area index (LAI) and dry matter (DM) attained highest value under D₂ (4.35 and 1640.1 g/m²); V₁ recorded maximum DM of 1605.3 g/m² than V₂ (1579.6 g/m²) at harvesting and significant differences due to variation in moisture levels were observed from 45 days after sowing (DAS) and 60 DAS respectively till harvesting for LAI and DM. DWRUB 52 performed better in terms of several yield promoting factors as compared to PL 807. The 10^th November crop yielded higher (45.31 q/ha) than that of 25^th October (42.49 q/ha) and 25^th November (37.95 q/ha) crop. Yield attributes and several biophysical indicators showed linear and positive relationship with grain yield.