Background: Pulses play an important role in Indian agriculture and they are the rich sources of protein. Redgram is an essential food legume, mostly cultivated under rainfed condition in India. Due to increasing population the demand of pulses is increased; hence the redgram productivity has to be increased to meet out the requirement. To overcome this problem an investigation was carried out to study the effect of crop geometry, modified canopy architecture and 1% PPFM application on morpho-physiological and biochemical responses of rainfed redgram during north-east monsoon season. Methods: The treatments comprised of varied crop geometries viz, broad casting (farmer’s practice), high density planting at 30 × 30 cm and recommended spacing of 60 × 30 cm; modified canopy architectures viz. nipping of primary branches at 45 and 60 days after the receipt of soaking rain and foliar application of 1% PPFM spray at 50% flowering to avoid the moisture stress. Result: The results revealed that sowing at 60 × 30 cm spacing with nipping at 45th day recorded significantly higher seed yield and protein yield of redgram in rainfed condition. Further, nipping at 45th day showed higher level of relative water content (51.6%) associated with lower level of proline (26.61 mg g-1).

Pulses are an important protein source for vegetarian people across the world and they have a great potential to improve the human health, contribute to global food and nutritional security. Variety of pulses were grown in India with 25% of global production and 27% of global consumption. Though India is the largest pulses producer in the world, it imports around 3.5 million tons annually to meet the ever-increasing requirement. Less adoption of improved Agro techniques, low fertile soils and unpredictable environment conditions are major factor for low production of pulses. As a results of increasing population, the projected pulses requirement will be 32 million tons by 2030 which necessitate annual growth rate of 4.2%. With adoption of suitable agronomic strategies, the productivity has to be enhanced to meet the demand. This review work was done at Department of Agronomy, Agricultural College and Research Institute, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India. Collected review and research papers were screened from various data base like TNAU e library, ARCC journals, google scholar, research gate and scopus used to write this paper. This review article documented information gathered on importance of pulses, area, production and productivity of pulses. Nipping is important agronomic practices that removes the apical bud dominance and promotes the lateral growth which turn better maintenance of source and sink relationship and enhance the pulses yield. Influence of nipping on growth and yield of various pluses crops has been discussed here.

Background: Redgram is an important food legume which is largely cultivated under rainfed condition. In India rainfed agriculture contributes 80% of the total pulses production and the projected requirement will be 39 million tons by 2050 which necessitates an annual growth rate of 2.2%. The productivity has to be increased from the present level of 834 kg ha-1 to 1200 kg ha-1. With adoption of suitable agronomic management strategies the productivity could be increased to meet our demand and achieve self sufficiency in production. Hence the current study was carried out to increase the productivity of redgram under rainfed condition.Methods: Field experiment was conducted in farmer’s field in Madurai district, Tamil Nadu during North East Monsoon season of 2019 to study the effect of improved agronomic manipulations on growth and yield of redgram under rainfed ecosystem. Agronomic management approaches viz., nipping of primary branches at 45 and 60 days after receipt of soaking rain, high density planting at 30 cm × 30 cm in addition to recommended spacing of 60 cm × 30 cm and foliar application of 1% PPFM spray were compared with farmer’s practice in the redgram variety Co (RG) 7. Pre monsoon sowing has been taken up and the rainfall received during the cropping period was 521.7 mm received in 31 rainy days.Result: The field experimental results revealed that adoption of agronomic manipulation at the appropriate stage of the crop has increased the productivity of redgram. Nipping of primary branches at 45th day of the crop significantly increased the total number of productive branches, number of pods plant-1 and recorded the maximum seed yield of 1512 kg ha-1 (72 per cent increase over farmer’s practice) under rainfed condition.

Background: Time of pre-emergence herbicide application is an important factor that decides the efficiency of herbicide. If the pre-emergence herbicide is not applied at appropriate time, it may cause ineffective weed control or toxicity to crops. With this background, a field experiment was conducted at TNAU, Madurai to optimize the time of pre-emergence herbicides namely pendimethalin and oxyfluorfen application for effective weed management in irrigated blackgram. Methods: The experiment was laid out in randomized block design with three replication. Treatments were application of pendimethalin at 0.75 kg ha-1 and oxyfluorfen at 0.2 kg ha-1 on 1, 2, 3, 4 days after sowing, weed free check and unweeded check. Result: Results of the study revealed that oxyfluorfen gave maximum weed control efficiency as compared to pendimethalin, but toxicity to the crop was observed when oxyfluorfen was sprayed after 2 days of sowing. Yield and economics were achieved higher with application of 0.75 kg ha-1 of pendimethalin at 2 DAS, which was on par with application of 0.2 kg ha-1 of oxyfluorfen at 1 DAS due to lesser toxicity. Application of 0.75 kg ha-1 of pendimethalin and 0.2 kg ha-1 of oxyfluorfen didn’t leave any herbicide residue after harvest. Hence, application of 0.75 kg ha-1 of pendimethalin at 2 DAS and 0.2 kg ha-1 of oxyfluorfen at 1 DAS can be recommended for effective weed management in irrigated balckgram.