Abstract
Background: Indian agricultural sector requires a huge consumption of total available water for the sake of optimum crop production. The modern era of water scarcity necessitates the escalation of water use efficiency of crops to secure higher portion of economic harvests per drop use of water in agriculture. Against this background, it is requires to introduce lesser water consuming crops like pulses, oilseeds etc with innovative and cost-effective agronomic interventions for the purpose of contributing towards conservation of more water. Methods: A field experiment was conducted at District Seed Farm, ‘A-B’ Block of Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya, West Bengal, during subsequent winter seasons of 2017-18 and 2018-19 to evaluate the effect of seed priming with molybdenum and foliar fertilization on moisture utilization of relay grass pea, variety Ratan (Bio L-212) without irrigation, using seed priming with Ammonium molybdate and foliar spray of 2% Urea and 0.5% NPK (19:19:19) in different combinations. Result: Maximum water use efficiency of 16.65 and 14.80 kg ha-1 mm-1 in the respective years were recorded with seed priming combined with twice foliar spray of 0.5% NPK (19:19:19) with the highest yield and moisture consumption. Total soil moisture content was found to be an exponential function of dry aerial biomass, but shared a polynomial correlation with leaf area index at different growth stages of grass pea. However, water use efficiency exhibited strong and polynomial correlation with seed yield and stover yield of grass pea in both the years. The combination of seed priming with Ammonium molybdate @ 0.5 g kg-1 seed along with a twice foliar spray of 0.5% NPK (19:19:19) will be a profitable technology for the relay grass pea growers in new alluvial zone of West Bengal.
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