Response of Onion (Allium cepa L.) to Different Sources and Levels of Sulphur on Growth, Yield and Quality

Abstract

The present investigation entitled “response of onion (Allium cepa L.) to different sources and levels of sulphur on growth, yield and quality” was carried out in the Horticulture Research Farm, Sam Higginbottom University of Agriculture and Sciences, Prayagraj during the Rabi season of 2021-22 to find out the best treatment combination for better growth, yield and quality of onion. The experiment was laid out in Randomized Block Design comprising of 13 treatments. The treatments consisted of two sources (viz., Elemental Sulphur and Gypsum) and six levels of sulphur (10, 20, 30, 40, 50 and 60 kg ha-1) along with control group. RDF was applied uniformly to all treatments. The parameters relating to growth, yield and quality were recorded to make a critical analysis of the crop as affected by the different treatments. The technique of representative sample was adopted for recording the observations on various morphological characters in onion. At every observation, five plants from each plot were randomly selected and tagged. The treatments in each replication were allotted randomly. The results revealed that the treatment T10 (40 kg/ha Gypsum + RDF at transplanting) was found to be the most suitable over all the other treatments in relation to plant height (39.33 cm, 50.09 cm and 72.11 cm), leaf length (33.33 cm, 44.41 cm, 63.34 cm) and number of leaves (6.71 cm, 8.08 cm, 11.96 cm) at different stages of crop growth (30, 60 and 90 DAT), neck diameter (15.69 mm), bulb diameter (69.63 mm polar diameter and 69.33 mm equatorial diameter), fresh weight of bulbs per plant bulb (195.29g) yield (312.46 q/ha), number of scales (12.89), total soluble solids (11.5°Brix) and ascorbic acid (13.62 mg/100g) and B:C ratio (2.31) of onion.