Extensive research has been conducted on effects of drought stress on growth and development of soybean but information is rather restricted on the limited-irrigation system by way of precaution against a long-term drought condition in the future. The experiment for limited-irrigation was conducted in transparent vinyl shelter at Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center (AVRDC), Taiwan in 1997. Two soybean varieties, Hwangkeum and AGS292, improved in Korea and AVRDC, respectively were used for this experiment. The relationships between normalized transpiration rate (NTR) and fraction of transpirable soil water (FTSW) in both varieties were similar that the NTR was unchanged until FTSW dropped to about 0.5 or 0.6. At FTSW less than those values, NTR declined rapidly. Days required to harvest in both varieties were significantly prolonged at IR6 treatment compared to any other treatments. Daily mean transpiration rate was significantly higher at IR5 treatment, as averaged over varieties. Similarly, water use efficiency was also high at 1R5 treatment. In both varieties, seed yield was the greatest at the IR5 treatment, as compared to any other limited-irrigation treatments, due to the increased seed number and high transpirational water use efficiency. The indices of input water and seed yield for the different limited-irrigation treatments against control indicated that Hwangkeum produced 59.6% or 60.7% of seed yield using 36.1% or 44.9% of input water, as compared to control, by irrigation at only R5 or R6 stages, respectively. The AGS292 produced 56.1% of seed yield with 35.4% of input water of control, when irrigated at R5 stage. The results of this study have elucidated that the limited irrigation at R5 stage in soybean can be minimized yield loss with such small quantity of water under the environment of long-term drought stress and the expected shortage of agricultural water in the future.

• Wook-Han Kim
• Byung-Hee Hong
• Yong-Hwan Ryu