Abstract
Among various crops, fruits play an important role to offer dietary requirements. Banana is one of the vital fruits in India and ranks second in terms of area under cultivation. As banana needs enough of nutrients and water to ensure high productivity, proper agronomic management on the aspects are essential. Recently, the adoption of drip irrigation, plastic mulch and fertigation of water-soluble nutrients through drip irrigation have become popular in banana farming. Fruits play an important role in the dietary requirements. Among various fruits, banana is vital crop in India that ranks second in terms of area under cultivation. Banana needs sufficient nutrients and water to ensure high productivity as evidenced in the earlier research; hence, proper nutrient and management are essential. To investigate the effects of different levels of primary nutrients through drip fertigation and plastic mulch on the response of the Grand Naine cultivar of banana, a field experiment was conducted in the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, West Bengal, India during Oct. 2019 to Apr. 2021. The experiment was laid out in a randomized complete block design with four fertigation levels, namely, 1.2 recommended dose of fertilizer (1.2 RDF), 1.0 RDF, 0.8 RDF and 0.6 RDF as the first factor and the second factor was with and without mulch (M1 and M0). Application of higher rate of nutrients (1.2 RDF) ensured better growth parameters and yield attributes. The highest banana yield was obtained under 120% RDF (i.e., 1.2 RDF) fertigation for both the main and ratoon crops, with a yield of 58.9 and 46.6 t/ha, respectively, however, it remained on par with 1.0 RDF and 0.8 RDF. Further, plastic mulch showed its significant superiority over non-mulched crop in terms of major growth parameters and yield of banana main crop; however, mulching did not significantly influence ratoon crop productivity. The study suggested 0.8 RDF and plastic mulching can be adopted in banana to obtain a higher yield and efficient nutrient utilization of applied nutrients in subtropical conditions of West Bengal.
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