MANURIAL EXPERIMENT ON GROUNDNUT

Abstract

Manurial experiments on groundnuts do not appear to have been conducted to any great extent in India, even though the crop attained commercial importance and occupied an area of two million acres as early as 1914 and over 8 million acres during 1938. The latest area statistics show that the acreage under groundnuts in India is roughly 7 millions. The few isolated experiments that were conducted in some of the Provinces indicate that the response of groundnuts to fertiliser application is to a large extent influenced by the nature and availability of plant food in the soil. On the black cotton soils of Bombay Presidency and the Central Provinces, nitrogenous manures are reported to have had no effect on the yield of groundnut (10) †. At Akola Experimental Station in Central Provinces, a definite response to the application of potassium sulphate has been obtained(10). On the Hebbal Farm in Mysore State, a combination of potassic and phosphatic manures has been found to be the best for application to red sandy loams (9). In Burma, in light sandy loam alkaline and poor in all essential elements of plant food manures alone have been found to have enhanced the yield(10).