Cumulative effect of botanical seed pelleting and foliar spray on morpho physiological, leaf chlorophyll, gas exchange and yield parameters in black gram

Abstract

Background: Black gram is one of the important pulse crops of the world and India is the major producer and consumer of pulses in the world. One of the main reason for low productivity of pulses is that they are cultivated mostly in areas with low soil moisture and poor soil fertility. In order to overcome such adverse conditions, low-cost techniques like seed hardening/pelleting are preferred. Seed pelleting provides package of nutrients that influences seed or soil at the seed-soil interface. Since the cost involved is very less, an attempt has been made to study the effect of botanical seed pelleting and foliar spary on growth and yield parameters in black gram cv. CO 6. Methods: Field experiments were conducted to evaluate the cumulative effect of botanical seed pelleting with pungam leaf powder @ 150g kg-1 and foliar spray of prosopis and moringa leaf powders with different concentrations (2%, 4%, 6% and 8%) on morpho physiological, leaf chlorophyll, gas exchange and yield parameters in black gram cv. CO 6 in the study. The observations on morpho physiological, leaf chlorophyll, gas exchange and yield parameters were recorded, statistically analysed and discussed here. Result: From the results, it was found that among the treatments, seed pelleting with pungam leaf powder @ 150 g kg-1 + foliar spray of prosopis leaf powder @ 6% recorded higher morpho physiological parameters viz., plant height (48.73 cm), number of branches plant-1 (8.78), dry matter production (14.83 g plant-1), chlorophyll a (1.03 mg g-1), chlorophyll b (1.11 mg g-1) and total chlorophyll content (2.14 mg g-1), photosynthesis and transpiration rates (27.33 mg CO2 m-2 s-1 and 10.60 mg H2O m-2 s-1), intercellular CO2 concentration and stomatal conductance (274.30 μ mol mol-1 and 0.82 mol-2 s-1). This treatment also recorded lower number of days to first flowering (23.23 days), earliness in 50 per cent flowering (30.12 days) and also recorded higher yield parameters such as lengthier pods, more number of pods plant-1, pod yield plant-1, number of seeds pod-1, seed yield plant-1, seed yield ha-1 and hundred seed weight of 5.60 cm, 26.30, 8.20 g, 7.30, 5.30 g, 795.12 kg ha-1 and 5.83 g, respectively as compared to other treatments. To conclude, seed pelleting with pungam leaf powder @ 150 g kg-1 + foliar spray of prosopis leaf powder @ 6% proved to be the best in enhancing morpho physiological, growth and yield parameters.