Promotional Effect of Water Soluble Fertilizers on Growth and Yield of Lowland Rice

Abstract

The present study aimed to study the effect of foliar nutrition of water-soluble fertilizers for enhancing yield and quality of rice during Kharif-2019 in clay loam soils of wetland farms, TNAU, Coimbatore. The experiment consisted of eleven treatments that include-100% RDF combined with foliar feeding of commercially available 19:19:19 @ 1% and 2%, TNAU WSF 19:19:19 @ 1% and 2%, TNAU Liquid Multi Micronutrient @ 1% either alone or in combination depending upon the treatments and absolute control. The experiment was laid out in a randomized block design (RBD) with eleven treatments replicated thrice using CO-51 rice as a test crop. The results revealed that foliar feeding of rice crop with different water-soluble fertilizers had a marked promotional effect on growth and yield of rice. Among the water-soluble fertilizers evaluated, foliar spray of TNAU water-soluble fertilizers 19:19:19 @ 2% + TNAU Liquid Multi Micronutrient @ 1% (T 10) concentration at active tillering, panicle initiation, 50% flowering and harvest stage along with a recommended dose of fertilizers recorded the maximum growth (plant height (45.8, 81.2, 93.5 and 105.6 cm), chlorophyll as SPAD value (45.7, 46.8, 48.6 and 44.5) and LAI (3.01, 8.10, 6.72 and 3.92)) and yield attributes (number of panicles m-2 (352), number of grains panicle-1 (198) and number of filled grains panicle-1 (180) and the maximum grain and straw yield of 6233 kg ha-1 and 7730 kg ha-1 respectively. The promotional effect was to the tune of 113.5 percent in grain and 79.8 percent in straw yield over control. Concerning normal practice, it was a 19.7 percent increase in grain yield, and a 5.2 percent increase in straw yield was observed.