A field experiment was carried out in Indian Institute of Soil Science, Bhopal during the rabi season 2011-12 to study the effect of different doses of phosphorus on the growth and yield of different varieties of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) under rainfed conditions in vertisols. The experiment was laid out in a Split plot design with three replications. There were four phosphorus levels viz., 0, 30, 60 and 90 kg P 2 O 5 ha -1 and four varieties of chickpea viz., JG 16, JG 11, JG 315 and JG 218. Barring JG 11, application of phosphorus from 0 to 60 kg ha -1 resulted in a linear increase in yield and yield attributing characters in rest of the varieties. Although there was no significant difference in seed yield among the varieties, application of either 60 or 90 kg P 2 O 5 ha -1 produced significantly higher seed yield over other doses of P. The application of phosphorus above 60 kg ha -1 has significantly increased the grain phosphorus content in all the four varieties but the interaction effect was not significant. A significant increase of grain phosphorus uptake with phosphorus nutrition was also observed in all the varieties.

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Whitebacked planthopper (WBPH) along with brown planthopper (BPH) has emerged as a major pest of rice in several Asian countries. Development and cultivation of varieties resistant to both planthoppers is an ecologically acceptable strategy to manage these pests. Sinna Sivappu, a Sri Lankan landrace, was reported to be resistant to both planthoppers. While inheritance of BPH resistance has been reported, the genetics of WBPH resistance in this variety is not known. Using a mapping population of 255 F 2:3 families from Taichung Native (TN)1/Sinna Sivappu cross and 128 polymorphic simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers, genes or quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for WBPH resistance quantified in ten phenotypic tests were identified, adopting classical Mendelian segregation, correlation and QTL analyses. The inheritance pattern suggested that a single recessive gene controlled regulation of seedling damage score. Antixenosis or nymphal preference was influenced by two complementary recessive genes, whereas tolerance in terms of days to wilt was under the influence of a single dominant gene. Several of these phenotypic tests recorded high degree of positive or negative correlation between them, suggesting dependence or redundancy of the tests. QTL analysis revealed 13 loci associated with nine traits. Five major-effect QTLs were detected for damage score (chromosome 6), nymphal survival (chromosome 12), and days to wilt (three QTLs on chromosome 4). We suggest involvement of four WBPH resistance genes in Sinna Sivappu, designated as wbph9(t), wbph10(t), wbph11(t), and Wbph12(t). One of the recessive genes could be allelic to any of the recessive genes reported in cluster C on chromosome 6 which might confer resistance to both BPH and WBPH.

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Field experiments conducted during rabi seasons of 1998 and 1999 in red sandy clay loam soils, under irrigated condition at Agricultural College and Research Institute, Madurai revealed that seed pelleting with ammonium molybdate 250 mg kg-1 and ferrous sulphate 500 mg kg-1 of seed in Rhizobium inoculated seeds produced improved growth parameters of soybean and yield. The same way benzyladenine foliar spray 25 ppm 2 times in association with DAP 2% and KCI 1% produced higher grain yield and are considered as efficient practice in improving the growth parameters of soybean.