Abstract
Despite the great potential of dual purpose wheat, limited exploitations have so far made due to decrease in final grain yield
owing the removal of early crop assimilates as fodder. A better planting time decision; however, can compensate this
reduction through considerable accumulation of assimilates for both fodder and grain. The influence of planting time to
compensate this reduction is yet unknown. We studied the effect of planting time in dual purpose wheat context over two
years (2009-10 and 2010-11) at DI Khan, Pakistan, using wheat cv. Zam-04 sown on four planting dates in dual purpose vs.
grain only treatments. Significant influence of planting dates and cutting was revealed on physiological attributes and yield
potential. Although both cutting and late sowing negatively influenced grain yield and yield related traits. The early sowing
resulted in a higher yield undercut than the late sown crop without cut, with an increased leaf area index (20%), leaf area
duration (20%), crop growth rate (16%), number of productive tillers (12%), number of grains spike-1 (25%), 1000-grain
weight (2%) and grain yield (24%). The early sowing in a dual purpose wheat system compensated the overall yield
reduction by fetching high incomes than grain only wheat system.
