Enhancing Ragi Yield: The Effect of Organic Seed Priming
V. Balachandrakumar *
School of Agriculture and Animal Sciences, Gandhigram Rural Institute, Dindigul-624 302, Tamil Nadu, India.
S. Devi
Department of Agronomy, Faculty of Agriculture, Annamalai University, Chidambaram-608002, Tamil Nadu, India.
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
The field study was conducted to evaluate the organic seed priming of ragi on growth, yield attributes and yield. A field experiment was conducted during 2021 at Experimental Farm, faculty of Agriculture, Annamalai University. It consists of seven treatments. The treatments were arranged in a randomized block design (RBD) with three replications. Results showed that organic seed priming of custard leaf extract has a significant impact on the growth attributes of plant height, LAI, Dry matter production and yield parameters like number of productive tillers per hill, weight of the single ear head per hill, number of fingers per ear head, length of the earhead, number of grains per ear head, grain yield and straw yield. The control treatment recorded the lowest values in all parameters. Maximum grain yield of 1777 kg ha-1 was recorded with organic seed priming of ragi with Custard leaf extract @ 3% (T4) and the lowest grain yield 1003 kg ha-1 was observed with control treatment.
Keywords: Organic seed priming, ragi, growth, yield