Vol. 12, Special Issue 8 (2023)

Author(s):
N Anando Singh, Sakhen Sorokhaibam, Sonika Yumnam, Jeti Konsam, Nilima Karam and Nancy Khairakpam

Abstract:
A field experiment was conducted over two consecutive winter seasons, 2018-19 and 2019-20, to improve crop and water productivity in chickpea through hydrogel and foliar nutrition under rainfed conditions. The experiment was laid out in a split plot design with three replications. In the main plots, there were two hydrogel levels (control and 5 kg/ha before sowing) and five foliar nutrition levels at flowering initiation and pod development stages (control, urea 2%, thiourea 500 ppm, salicyclic acid 100 ppm, and NPK (19:19:19) at 0.5%) in the subplots, together comprising of ten treatment combinations. The pooled mean data from 2018-19 to 2019-20 revealed that, while applying hydrogel at 5 kg/ha before sowing had no influence on yield, it did result in higher biological yield than the control. Foliar nutrition application during flower initiation and pod development stages increased the dry matter production, resulting in higher chickpea seed yield. Thiourea application resulted in enhancing water use efficiency compared to other treatments.