Response of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) to seed treatment and foliar application of liquid organic under different doses of nutrients

Abstract

A field experiment was conducted at GBPUA&T, Pantnagar during rabi season of 2020-21 to study the effect of kunapajala, a traditional liquid organic, on plant growth and productivity under different nutrient doses. The experiment comprised of 14 treatments which were laid out in randomized block design with three replications. The treatments included seed invigoration with three concentrations of kunapajalaand four nutrient doses along with two control treatments. All treatments were followed by foliar application of 10% herbal kunapajala except control treatments. The results revealed that 10% kunapajala priming+100% RDN recorded significantly higher field emergence (94.3%), plant population (27.4m-2 ) and growth attributes like plant height (83.5 cm) and dry matter accumulation (30.3 g) at harvest, number of effective nodule (32.9) and nodule dry weight (118.3 mg). The maximum yield attributes like podsplant-1 (84.1) and 100 grains weight (20.7 g) and yield parameters i.e., grain yield (1712.60 kgha-1 ) and protein yield (358.3kg ha-1 ) were recorded under 10% kunapajala priming+100% RDN treatment, where as it also recorded the highest economics of cultivation viz., gross returns, net returns and B:C ratio over other treatments. Application of 50% kunapajala priming without fertilizer resulted into lowest plant growth and yield parameters.