effect of terminal water deficit stress on zinc and iron concentration in wheat grain

Micronutrients deficiency has leading impact on human diets and is serious concern for malnutrition globally. in developing countries, the hidden hunger drives severe health concerns and has become an urgent economic load on the health care system. malnutrition resulted mainly due to the deficiencies of vitamin a, zinc, iodine, folate, and iron. mineral defi ciencies, primarily zinc (zn) and iron (fe), are impacting over half of the world population. to evaluate of fe and zn concentration of durum wheat grains in 30 durum wheat genotype, two field experiments were carried out at research farm of the campus of agriculture and natural resources, razi university, kermanshah in 2011-2012 under water deficit stress (rain-fed) non-stress (irrigated) conditions using two completely randomized blocks design with three replications. combined analysis of variance of the data showed that the environments (rain-fed and irrigated conditions) were a significant source of variation of zinc content. the durum wheat genotypes differed significantly for both fe and zn concentration. two-way interaction of environment × genotype was significant for only fe concentration. the percentage reductions due to terminal water deficit stress for the fe and zn concentration were 17.11 and 27.86%, respectively. under irrigated conditions, the highest amount of iron content was recorded in genotypes 1, 3 and 11, while genotypes 22, 26 and 27 had higher zn amount. in rain-fed environment, the grains of entries 22, 23 and 25 showed the highest fe content, but genotypes 5, 10 and 27 had high zn content.