Growth and yield attributing characters of chickpea varieties as influenced by altering plant rectangularity by varying plant spacing

Abstract

A field experiment was carried out during rabi season of 2017-18 and 2018-19 on chickpea to assess the growth and yield of chickpea variety (PG 186, PG 4 and PG 5) and plant spacing/ rectangularity 5 cm (0.16), 10 cm (0.33), 15 cm (0.5) and 20 cm (0.66). The results revealed that the chickpea variety PG 5 recorded significantly higher grain yield of 1820 and 2806 kg/ha, respectively, during 2017-18 and 2018-19 which was found significantly superior to PG 4 and PG 186. The significantly highest grain yield (1943 and 2689 kg/ha respectively, during 2017-18 and 2018-19) was obtained by chickpea at closer plant spacing of 5 cm (0.16 rectangularity) over rest of the plant spacings/ rectangularities. Though the number of pods, grain yield per plant and 100 grain weight were found maximum at wider plant spacing of 20 cm (0.66) but it could not compensate the yield loss due to less plant population in wider plant spacing.