Effect of soil and foliar application of zinc on growth and yield parameters of sweet orange var. Nucellar (Citrus sinensis L. Osbeck)

Abstract

An experiment was conducted to study the effect of soil and foliar application of zinc on growth and yield parameters of sweet orange (Citrus sinensis L. Osbeck) Cv. Nucellar.” was carried out at Sweet Orange Research station, Badnapur, Dist. Jalna during 2017-18.The experiment was laid out in Randomized Block Design (RBD) with 12 treatments and three replication. Observations were recorded on growth and yield characteristics of sweet orange. The results were revealed that, there were significant variations in growth, and yield of sweet orange due to application soil and foliar application of zinc.The values of vegetative growth parameters stem girth, plant spread and number of branches per tree showed the non- significant effect by treatments and plant height and canopy volume no.of flowers per branch and fruit drop showed significant effect by the treatments. The height of tree, canopy volume showed most effective in T10 (Soil application ofZnSO4@150gm+ Foliar spray [email protected]%) and all treatment superior over the control except (T1and T4) and minimum effective in T1 i.e. control. The physical parameter of fruit like average diameter of fruit most effective in T10 (Soil application ofZnSO4@150gm+ Foliar spray of [email protected]%) followed by treatment T11(Soil application of ZnSO4@100gm+ Foliar spray of [email protected]%) and T12(Soil application ofZnSO4 @150gm+ Foliar spray of [email protected]%) and minimum effective in T1 (control).the yield parameters number of fruit per tree and weight of fruit per tree, weight of one fruit and weight of five fruit were noticed maximum in T10 (Soil application ofZnSO4@150gm+ Foliar spray of [email protected]%) followed by treatment T11(Soil application of ZnSO4@100gm+ Foliar spray of [email protected]%) and T12(Soil application ofZnSO4 @150gm+ Foliar spray of [email protected]%) and minimum effective in T1 (control).application of T10 (Soil application ofZnSO4@150gm+ Foliar spray of [email protected]%) improved economics in sweet orange.