Plant growth is often affected with hampered physiological and cellular functioning due to salinity and drought stress. To assess the effectiveness of plant bioregulators (PBRs) in mitigating abiotic stresses, a double spilt plot field study was conducted with three replications at ICAR-CSSRI, research farm, Nain, Panipat. The study comprised of three deficit irrigation regimes viz., 100, 80 and 60% of crop evapo-transpiration (ET c ) (I 1 , I 2 and I 3 ), four levels of irrigation water salinity i.e. 2, 4, 8, 12 dS m −1 (S 0 , S 1 , S 2 and S 3 ) and two PBRs salicylic acid (SA; G 1 ) and thiourea (TU; G 2 ). Irrigations, as per regimes and salinity, were applied at identified critical stages of wheat and if needed in pearl millet. PBRs were applied as seed priming and foliar sprays at two sensitive stages of respective crops. The trend of plant height, and physiological and biochemical traits was similar under different treatments at both stages, but differed significantly only at reproductive stage. Water deficit caused significant reduction in pearl millet (5.1%) and wheat (6.7%) grain yields. The reduction in grain yield under 8 and 12 dS m −1 was 12.90 and 22.43% in pearl millet and 7.68 and 32.93% in wheat, respectively compared to 2 dS m −1 . Application of either SA (G 1 ) or TU (G 2 ) significantly enhanced plant height and grain yield, but magnitude of the increment was higher with SA in pearl millet and with TU in wheat. Application of SA and TU increased grain yield by 14.42 and 12.98 in pearl millet, and 12.90 and 17.36% in wheat, respectively. The plant height, RWC, TC, MI, LP, proline, Fv/Fm and Na/K ratio significantly reduced by salinity stress in pearl millet and both water and salinity stress in wheat. Application of both PBRs proved beneficial to mitigate adverse effect of water deficit and salt stress by significantly improving physiological traits, biochemical traits and ultimately grain yield in both crops.

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Phosphorus is a key nutrient for increasing productivity of legumes. It is required for plant growth and root development. Phosphorus deficiency in soil is widespread and crops grown under deficient situation show significant response to fertilizer phosphorus. At several places normal yield of crops could not be achieved despite judicious use of NPK fertilizers due to deficiency of micronutrients in soil, in general, that of Zn in particular. The knowledge regarding the use of optimum dose of nutrients especially Phosphorus and Zinc is of serious concern. The literature about the performance of fodder cowpea (Vigna unguiculata) in relation to phosphorus and zinc nutrition is reviewed in this paper.

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Water and salinity stresses are the major environmental concerns limiting crop production, particularly in arid and semi-arid ecologies. Focused research is required to develop mitigating strategies to manage such stresses. Application of plant-bioregulators (PBRs) may be an effective option to manage water and salinity stresses. Therefore, a field experiment was conducted during 2016–17 and 2017–18 at semi-arid saline site of NW (north-western) India to assess the effectiveness of salicylic acid and thiourea in easing out the adverse effect of variable water deficit and irrigation water salinity regimes. Increasing water deficit and its salinity significantly (P<0.001) reduced all the studied growth parameters, viz. plant height, crop stand, no. of tillers, leaf area index and relative growth rate; and yield attributes like no. of effective tillers, spike length, grains/spike, grain weight/spike, 1000-grain weight, specific weight. Application of either salicylic acid or thiourea significantly improved growth parameters in comparison to control and thiourea proved more effective. Thiourea application improved grain yield by 3.96 and 17.36%, biological yield by 4.21 and 14.82%, effective no. of tillers by 3.77 and 11.91%, weight/spike by 2.83 and 15.17%, 1000-grain weight by 3.72 and 12.66% and specific weight by 2.04 and 8.84% compared to salicylic acid and control, respectively. This might be due to better nutrient uptake, water relations, enhanced CO2 fixation and effective partitioning of assimilates. Thus, thiourea and salicylic acid application in wheat found better as compared to control under saline water stress.

Journal homepage: http://www.ijcmas.com Poor quality water is adversely affecting the performance of pearl millet crop. Cultivation of salinity tolerant pearl millet may be adapted as strategies for ensuring yield and good quality through effective use of poor quality water. Therefore, we attempted to evaluate the performance of pearlmillet under salinity levels of irrigation water [normal (~0.6 dSm -1 ) and saline 3, 6 and 9 dS m -1 water] and two genotypes [AVKB-19 and ICMV-15111] .94) recorded under the experimental plots irrigated with good quality water. Among the varieties, the maximum No. of effective tiller/plant (4.02), highest Ear head length (cm) (26.88), highest Ear head girth (cm) (7.87), maximum 1000-grain weight (gram) (7.25), and maximum No. of grain per Ear head (1612.26) was recorded with AVKB-19. Genotype AVKB-19 produced significantly higher (16.26%) mean grain yield of 1.93 t/ha as compared to 1.66 t/ha in ICMV-15111. Increase in the salt concentrations of irrigation water from good quality to EC 9.0 dS/m caused significant decrease in grain yield. The significant reduction (37.44%) was observed mainly at the higher salinity (9 dS/m) of irrigation water compared to the good quality water, whereas, it was 9.90 and 20.80% at EC 3.0 and 6.0 dS/m, respectively. The maximum value for crude protein content (CP) (10

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