Growth and Yield Response to Brinjal (Solanum melongena L.) Varieties to the Application of Bio-stimulants

Abstract

A field experiment was conducted at the Experimental farm of Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, DAV University, Jalandhar in Kharif-2024. The experiment was laid out in Factorial Randomized Block Design (FRBD) with three replications. The experiment consisted of two different varieties viz., Pusa Purple Round (V1) and Lalita F1 Hybrid (V2) and bio-stimulants viz., Control (T1), N: P: K(T2), N: P: K + Biofertilizer (T3), N: P: K + Seaweed extract (Ascophyllum nodosum) (T4) and N: P: K + Biofertilizer (Azotobacter)+ Seaweed extract (T5). The results concluded that the combination of the treatments was found be significantly better than the other treatments with respect to growth and yield parameters.Observations were recorded on plant height (cm), number of leaves per plant, number of primary branches, number of secondary leaves, days of 1st flowering, days to 50% flowering, stem diameter (cm), fruit diameter (mm), fruit length (cm), number of fruits per plant, average fruit weight (g), yield per plant (kg/ plant), yield per plot (kg/ plot) and yield per hectare (t/ ha). Analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed a significant effect of biostimulants, varieties and their interaction for all the characters under study. In case of variety, V1 observed maximum number of primary braches (5.09), stem diameter (2.26 mm), fruit diameter (6.01cm), fruit length (8.50 cm), number of fruits per plant (29.33), average fruit weight (152.16 g), yield per plot (16.9 kg/plot) and in V2 maximum observations recorded in plant height, number of secondary branches, number of leaves (64.29), yield per plant (3.03 kg/plant), yield per hectare (28.16 t/ha).On the other hand, in biostimulants T5 shows significant differences among them and is better than other treatments. The results concluded that combination of the treatments was found significantly better than the other treatments with respect to growth and yield parameters.