An experiment was conducted to evaluate the performance of deep placement of urea and NPK briquettes compared to broadcast application of prilled urea for bitter gourd production during the Kharif-1 season of 2013. The experiments were conducted in two locations in Jessore district, Chowgacha and Jessore sadar. Seven treatments were designed to evaluate crops response: T 1 : Control, T 2 : Farmer's practice, T 3 : Recommended doses of all fertilizers except N, T 4 : Recommended doses of all fertilizers, T 5 : Urea briquette + other fertilizers, T 6 : NPK briquette + other fertilizers and T 7 : NPK briquette + other fertilizers except cowdung. The rate of urea and NPK briquette was 10 percent less than the rate of recommended prilled urea. The experiment was laid out in a Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with three replications. The sizes of NPK and urea briquette were 3.4 g and 2.7 g, respectively. The recommended fertilizer doses were used to supply N, P, K, S, Zn and B from Urea, TSP, MoP, gypsum, zinc sulphate (hepta) and boric acid, respectively. The results showed that deep placement of NPK briquette gave significantly the highest yield of bitter gourd (32.16 tha -1 ) followed by urea briquette (30.45 tha -1 ) which were 12.34 and 7.41 percent higher over recommended doses of all fertilizers. The highest N recovery (77.4 %) was found when 72 kg N ha -1 was applied as NPK briquette.

A study was conducted in Monirampur upazila under Jessore district from July to December, 2016 to collect information on names, numbers and comparative availability of different brands of Zinc fertilizers in order to aid the assessment of nutrient status for quality of the brands. For this purpose, information was collected from 54 randomly selected fertilizer shops (20 BCIC fertilizer dealers and 34 retailers) through questionnaire interview. In the study total 77 brands [41 Zinc sulfate (mono), 11 Zinc sulfate (hepta) and 25 Chelated zinc] of zinc fertilizer marketed by 49 companies were found in the upazila. Zingsul, Mim zinc, Grogin, Bumper mono zinc, Eon zinc and Geel mono of Zinc sulfate (mono) brands, Topaz of Zinc sulfate (hepta) brands and Mim zinc gold of Chelated zinc brands were mostly available. "Grogin" of Zinc sulfate (mono) and "Topaz" of Zinc sulfate (hepta) were the top most available. Ten percent of Zinc sulfate (hepta) mentioned no registration number. There was a significant difference between highest and lowest MRP of all types (imported, supplied and manufactured) of Zinc sulfate (mono) and Zinc sulfate (hepta) fertilizer as well as imported Chelated zinc brands.

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