Evaluation of rapeseed-mustard cultivars under late sown condition in coastal ecosystem of West Bengal

Abstract

In our present report, we evaluated seven rapeseed mustard cultivars at coastal saline zone of West Bengal, India under rice-mustard sequence in a triplicated randomized block design for 14 traits to study their performance under late sown (2nd December) condition. The cultivars were sown at 30 cm × 10 cm spacing during winter of 2013?14 and 2014?15. The soil was clay in texture and had the following key properties for the 0?30 cm layer: pH 5.84, electrical conductivity (EC) 1.55 dS/m, available nitrogen (N) 155.24 kg/ha, available phosphorus (P) 105.76 kg/ha, available potassium (K) 365.86 kg/ha and available B 2.63 kg/ha. Among the seven cultivars, Kranti produced significantly (p?0.05) higher seed yield (1.33 t/ha) closely followed by the hybrids PAC-409 (1.23 t/ha) and Pusa Bold (1.21 t/ha). Seed yield showed significant (p?0.05) positive correlation with all the independent variables (plant height, R2=0.88; dry matter, R2=0.42; days to 50 % flowering, R2=0.27; number of siliqua/plant, R2=0.38; seeds/siliqua, R2=0.48; except number of fertile plants/m2, R2=-0.06; number of secondary branches/plant, R2=-0.97 and length of siliqua, R2=-0.07). However, number of secondary branches/plant had significant (p?0.05) and negative correlation with seed yield of mustard (R2=-0.97). Plant height revealed the highest degree of correlation (R2=0.88) with seed yield followed by siliqua per main branch (R2=0.77), days to harvest (R2=0.75) and 1000-seed weight (R2=0.52). The results indicated that selection of suitable rapeseed mustard cultivars based on these traits would be more effective in improving seed yield in mustard.