Growth and yield response of bitter gourd to foliar applied urea under different irrigation levels

Abstract

In order to examine the growth and yield response of bitter gourd to foliar applied urea at different concentrations and irrigation at various frequencies, the experiment was conducted during 2016 using 3 replicated Randomized Complete Block Design at Sindh Agriculture University Tandojam. Irrigation was applied at weekly interval (T1), Irrigation at 10 days interval (T2), T2+foliar urea @ 1.5% (T3), T2+foliar urea @ 3% (T4), Irrigation at 15 days interval (T5), T5 + foliar urea @ 1.5% (T6), T5 + foliar urea @ 3% (T7). The results revealed that Irrigation at 10 days interval + foliar urea at 3.0% conc.proved to be an optimum treatmentand resulted in 144.95 cm vine length, 19.96 cm fruit length, 17.45cm diameter of fruit, 79.95 g average fruit weight, 8.95 number of fruits vine-1 , 739.00 g weight of fruits vine-1 and 9199.7 kg ha-1 fruit yield. The irrigation at 10 days interval + foliar application of urea (1.5%)ranked 2 nd ; irrigation at 15 days interval + foliar urea (3.0%)ranked 3 rd ; irrigation at 15 days interval + foliar urea (1.5%)ranked 4 th ; while weekly (control), 10 days,15 days irrigation interval without foliar applied urea ranked 5 th , 6 th and 7 th respectively. The values for all the growth and productivity of bitter gourd were markedly increased with foliar application of urea, particularly at higher concentration. It was concluded that for acghieving desired yield performance of bittergourd the crop may be irrigted at 10 days interval + foliar application of urea at 3.0% conc.