Yield performance of groundnut (Arachis hypogaea L.) genotypes under varying plant densities and seasons

Abstract

The experiment was conducted at the Education and Research Farm of the Department of Botany, College of Agriculture, Dapoli, Dist. Ratnagiri, Maharashtra state during the period from Kharif and Rabbi 2017-18 and 2018- 19 to study the yield performance of groundnut genotypes under varying plant densities and seasons. The experiment was laid out in a split plot design with three replications. Results showed that different treatments had significant influence on growth and yield contributing characters. Crop sown in Rabbi season (S2) exhibited better achievement than kharif season with respect to all yield and yield component. The genotype G3 (RTNG-27) performed best in yield contributing characters than other genotypes. The important findings emerged from this investigation revealed that groundnut sown at the spacing 30 × 20 cm recorded significantly highest number of pods per plant (25.13 plant-1), pod weight per plant (3.12 plant-1), shelling percentage (70.07 plant-1) and harvest index (40.84 plant-1) was comparable with spacing 30 ×15 cm and 30 × 10 cm. Closer spacing of 30 x 10 cm is the best spacing in terms of pod yield q/ha (38.09 q/ha) in groundnut genotypes.