Vol. 10, Issue 10 (2021)

Author(s):
Yugvinder, Kuldeep Kumar, Naveen Kumar, Vikas Gill, Monika Yadav and Sandeep Singh

Abstract:
India is the largest producer, consumer and exporter of chilli. The imbalance and continuous use of chemical fertilizers has detrimental effect on soil physical, chemical and biological properties thereby affecting the quality of the crop, besides causing environmental pollution Therefore, there is an urgent need to limit the usage of chemical fertilizers and the usage of organics should be increased which is needed to check the yield and quality levels. Keeping this in view, the present investigation was undertaken during the summer season of 2019-20 at the Research Farm of the Department of Vegetable Science, CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar, Haryana to evaluate the effect of integrated nutrient management on quality of chilli. The Seed material of chilli cv. “Kashi Anmol” was grown with thirteen different treatment combinations. The experimental results revealed that the application of Recommended NPK + Vermicompost @ 2 t/ha + Azotobacter (T₃) which was at par with treatment T₅ (50% NPK + FYM @ 12.5 t/ha + Vermicompost @ 2 t/ha + Azotobacter) and T₄ (Recommended NPK + FYM @ 12.5 t/ ha + Azotobacter) and performed superiorly over the other treatments with remarkably higher values for all the quality attributes including total soluble solids (%), ascorbic acid (mg/100g) and NPK uptake by the plant (g/plant). Therefore, to reduce the use of chemical fertilizers with maintaining sustainability of soil fertility and for enhancing the quality, the chilli crop may be supplied with 50% Recommended NPK + FYM @ 12.5 t/ha + Vermicompost @ 2 t/ha + Azotobacter as per treatment (T₅).