159Chapter 8
Effect of High Temperature and Water Stress
on Groundnuts Under Field Conditions
Vijaya Gopal Kakani, Timothy R. Wheeler, Peter Q. Craufurd
and Rao C. N. Rachaputi
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015
R. Mahalingam (ed.), Combined Stresses in Plants, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-07899-1_8
V. G. Kakani ()
Department of Plant and Soil Sciences,
Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, USA
e-mail: [email protected]
T. R. Wheeler
Department of Agriculture, University of Reading, Reading, UK
P. Q. Craufurd
Global Conservation Agriculture Program, CIMMYT, Nairobi, Kenya
R. C. N. Rachaputi
Center for Plant Science, University of Queensland, Kingaroy, Australia
8.1 Introduction
In the semiarid environments of the world, which contribute to 90 % of global
groundnut production, high temperature and water stress often occur together
(Nix 1975 ; Kramer 1980 ). The effects of drought under field situations are well
established in groundnut (e.g. Williams et al. 1986 ; Nageswara Rao et al. 1988 ;
Chapman et al. 1993a). Reports of the effects of increased temperature, both air and
soil, in groundnut fields are available in the literature (e.g. Williams et al. 1975b;
Sivakumar et al. 1993 ). However, high-temperature studies on groundnut growth
and development are confined to controlled environment conditions (e.g. Wheeler
et al. 1997 ; Prasad et al. 1999a, 1999b, 2000 ; Craufurd et al. 2003 ).
High-temperature studies conducted on groundnut by Prasad et al. ( 1998 ,
1999a, 1999b, 2000 ) use a high-temperature treatment for a period of 12 h, with
temperature changing as a square wave. Such uniform temperature fluctuations do
not occur in natural environments. Temperatures under field conditions follow a
more sinusoidal pattern, reaching the peak during the afternoons (Fig. 8.1). To con-
firm the findings of studies of high-temperature effects on groundnuts conducted in
a controlled environment, field studies in natural, hot environments are essential.
Studies evaluating the effects of both drought and high temperature in groundnut