MSc

A field experiment was conducted at the Instructional Farm of the College of Agriculture, Vellayani during the period August to December 1988 to study the effects of graded doses of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium on the growth, yield and quality of vegetable chilli variety ‘Jwala Sakhi’. The soil of the experimental field was red loam, acidic in reaction, low in available nitrogen and potassium and medium in available phosphorus. The treatments consisted of factorial combinations of 3 levels each of nitrogen (75, 100 and 125 kg N/ha), phosphorus (40, 60 and 80 kg P2O5/ha) and potassium (25, 45 and 65 kg K2O/ha) with absolute control. The experiment was laid out as a 33+1 partially confounded factorial in Randomised Block Design Confounding NP2K and NP2K2 in replication 1 and 2 respectively. An abstract of the result is given below.
Application of nitrogen and phosphorus had profound influence on all growth characters like plant height, number or branches, drymatter production, shoot-root ratio and number of days taken for 50% flowering. Application of potassium exerted significant influence only on drymatter production and number of days taken for 50 % flowering among the growth characters.
Yield attributes such as number of flowers, number of pods, percentage fruit set, length of pods, girth of pods and 100 pod weight were significantly increased by the application of nitrogen. Phosphorus application also significantly influenced the yield attributed except length and girth of pods. Influence of potassium was significant only for 100 pod weight. The mean yield of chilli increased with the application of all the three nutrients.
Application of nitrogen significantly increased the ascorbic acid content of fresh fruits upto 100 kg N/ha. Phosphorus and potassium had little influence in this respect.
Uptake of nitrogen was found to be influenced by higher doses of all the three nutrients. Phosphorus uptake was significantly influenced by nitrogen and phosphorus and phosphorus and potassium application significantly increased the potassium uptake by plant.
The influence of graded levels of nutrients was not significant in enhancing the content of available nitrogen, phosphorus or potassium in soil after the experiment.
Number of pods and 100 pod weight were found to be the important yield contributing factors followed by length of pods.
The net income and net return per rupee invested were significantly influenced by all the three nutrients and application of 110 kg N, 67 kg P2O5 and 57 kg K2O per ha was found to be the economic optimum doses of the nutrients.