Influence of Sowing Time on Varied Duration Redgram Genotypes in YSR Kadapa District

Abstract

It is well known that redgram is a photo sensitive long duration crop of 180 days and taking up redgram will occupy the land for the year. But now because of the availability of photo insensitive short (120 days) and medium duration redgram genotypes (150 days), farmers can able to go for double cropping after harvesting of redgram with additional benefits. So there is a pressing need to evaluate the performance of these photo insensitive varieties of redgram compared to popularly grown long and medium duration varieties. Hence the experiment was conducted during kharif seasons of 2018 and 2019 at Agricultural Research Station, Utukur, YSR kadapa district of Andhra Pradesh to evaluate the performance of varied duration redgram genotypes under changing climate .The experiment was laid out in split plot design by taking three dates of sowing i.e. July I F.N, July II F.N and august I F.N in main plots and three varied duration i.e. long (180 days) (ICPL 87119), medium (LRG-52) (150 days) and short duration genotypes (120 days) (ICPL 20338) in sub- plots in three replications. The seeds were sown by dibbling in furrows at a depth of 5 cm at a spacing of 120 cm x 20 cm for long and medium duration genotypes and 30 cm x 10 cm for short duration genotypes. Plot wise data on growth parameters like plant height, number of branches per plant, number of pods per plant and yield parameters like pod length, number of seeds per pod, and 100 seed weight was taken and analysed by using SPSS software. The results indicated that Sowing of long or medium duration redgram varieties in July first or second fortnight depending on the onset of the monsoon is recommended for higher yield in redgram in YSR kadapa district of Andhra Pradesh whereas the performance of short duration varieties of redgram was poor in both the years making them unsuitable under rainfed conditions during kharif as rainfall affect the flowering which finally reduced the yield.