Could maneuvering the methods of zinc and boron application influences yield and agro-morphological traits of brinjal in inceptisols?

Abstract

Brinjal is one of the widely grown vegetable with high nutritive value responsive to applied Zn and B in deficient soils. With this background, a pot experiment was conducted at College of Horticulture Farm to study the effect of FYM, zinc and boron on yield and agro-morphological characters of brinjal where two levels of FYM (0 and 5 t ha 1), four levels of Zn (Zn0: No Zn, Zn1: 5.0 kg Zn ha-1 as basal, Zn2: 10.0 kg Zn ha-1 as basal and Zn3: 5.0 kg Zn ha-1 as basal + Foliar spray of Zn twice @ 0.5% ZnSO4.7H2O solution) and three levels of B (B0: No B, B1: 1kg B ha-1 and B2: 2 kg B ha-1) were applied in factorial completely randomized design. The application of Zn and B significantly influenced the fruit yield and other agro-morphological parameters viz., number of fruits per plant, plant height, fruit diameter and fruit length of brinjal. The highest increase was found with the conjoint application of soil + foliar application of Zn and highest dose of B i.e. 2.0 kg B ha-1 along with FYM. On average, fruit yield of brinjal varied between 0.92 to 1.31 kg pot-1 with a mean value of 1.12 kg pot-1. Zinc application @ 10.0 kg ha-1 through basal (Zn2) as well as soil + foliar application of Zn (Zn3) significantly enhanced the fruit yield of brinjal over the application of 5.0 kg Zn ha-1 as well as over the control. Application of Zn fertilizers along with FYM enhanced the brinjal fruit yield to the extent of 10-24% over the control under different treatment combinations of Zn (either soil application or through soil plus foliar application), whereas, application of B increased the fruit yield to the tune of 12 to 17% compared to no B application. The interaction between FYM and Zn and well as between FYM and B had also shown significant positive effect towards fruit yield of brinjal.