Productivity of rice as influenced by soil and foliar application of silicon

Abstract

A field experiment was conducted at Regional Horticultural Research and Extension Centre, GKVK campus, Bengaluru-65, Karnataka during 2019-20 to study the effect of foliar application of zinc and boron from different sources on growth, yield and quality of custard apple (Annona squamosa L.) cv. Arka Sahan. The experiment was laid out in Randomized Complete Block Design with twelve treatments replicated thrice. The treatments consisted of foliar application of 0.5% Zinc sulphate, 0.5% Zinc chloride, 0.5% Zinc oxide, 0.3% Boric acid and 0.3% Borax either alone or in combination, along with water spray as control. Each treatment was imposed thrice to the existing custard apple trees, one at the time of flowering, second at fruit set stage and third at pre-harvest stage. The results revealed that foliar application of 0.5% Zinc sulphate plus 0.3% borax significantly enhanced the growth attributes of custard apple in terms of shoot length (50.60 cm), number of leaves per branch (130.72) and leaf area (130.35 cm2) along with improved yield parameters like number of flowers per tree (564.17), percentage of fruit set (93.33), number of fruits per tree (22.83) and fruit yield per tree (11.09 kg). The same treatment combination yielded the fruits having superior physical quality in terms of highest fruit diameter (9.65 cm), fruit volume (174.59 mL), fruit weight (485.98 g) and pulp weight (353.64 g). The quality parameters of fruit such as reducing sugars (22.03%), total sugars (23.85%), TSS (32.25 0Brix) and ascorbic acid (38.61%) contents of fruit significantly improved along with minimum physiological weight loss during keeping time of 1st day (1.00 %), 3rd day (3.42 %), 5th day (6.27 %) and 7th day (11.01 %) after ripening were recorded with the same treatment combination. Among different treatments, the combined foliar application of 0.5% Zinc sulphate and 0.3% Borax showed best results with regard to growth, yield and quality of custard apple cv. Arka Sahan.