Abstract
Rice is the staple food for over half of the Indian population, hence great emphasis has to be laid on ways and means to fortify seeds organically for better seed vigour. Seed fortification is one of the important seed invigoration treatment. Germinated grains are good sources of ascorbic acid, riboflavin, choline, thiamine, tocopherols and pantothenic acid which increases the nutritional quality. Extract has been prepared from the sprouted pulses. Foliar spray is a very easy way to supply valuable nutrients to plants. With this background, an experiment was conducted in 2008 to study the effect of crop fortification with pulse sprout extract on crop growth and seed yield in rice seeds. Field experiment was conducted with the treatments which include foliar spray of rice crop with 3, 5 and 7% of horse gram sprout extract and 7, 9 and 11%, respectively of cowpea sprout extract and crop without foliar spray served as control. The observations made on crop growth and yield factors such as plant height (cm) at maturity stage, Dry matter production (g plant-1), No. of tillers plant-1, No. of productive tillers plant-1, Chlorophyll content, Panicle length (cm), No. of seeds panicle-1, 1000 Seed weight (g) and seed yield. Among these treatments foliar spray with 3% horse gram sprout extract recorded the highest yield of 4324 kg/ha whereas control recorded seed yield of 3603 kg/ha. Key words: Rice crop, pulse sprout extract, foliar spray, Horse gram and cowpea
Highlights
INTRODUCTIONCountries agriculture is still largely based on low inputs, because farmers cannot afford the high costs of chemical fertilizers and pesticides
Rice is the major staple food for more than two billion people in Asia and one-third of the calorific intake of nearly one billion people of Africa and Latin America
Significant differences were found due to foliar application of pulse sprout extract
Summary
Countries agriculture is still largely based on low inputs, because farmers cannot afford the high costs of chemical fertilizers and pesticides For such farmers, organic farming can provide a better economic alternative because the advantages are twofold; i) the inputs are of lesser cost and ii) the produces fetch higher price. The application of foliar fertilizer is the quickest way to deliver the nutrients to the tissues and organs of the crop (Saira et al, 2011). With these ideas, an attempt was made to explore the effect of seed fortification with pulse sprout extract on crop growth, seed yield and quality in rice seeds
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