International Journal of Plant & Soil Science

Field pea (Pisum sativum L.) is an important legume crop grown for its high protein content and ability to improve soil fertility. Proper agronomic practices such as optimum plant spacing and mulching are essential for improving growth, yield, and profitability of the crop. Keeping this in view, a field experiment was conducted during the rabi season of 2024–25 at the Experimental Farm of Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Utlou, Manipur, to study, “Effect of spacing and mulching on growth and yield of field pea (Pisum sativum L.)” The experiment was laid out in a Factorial Randomized Block Design of 9(nine) treatments, containing three levels of spacing and three levels of mulching i.e. T1(S1M1): 20x10cm + no mulch, T2(S1M2): 20x10cm + rice husk mulch, T3(S1M3): 20x10cm + saw dust, T4(S2M1): 30x10cm + no mulch, T5(S2M2): 30x10cm + rice husk, T6(S2M3): 30x10cm + saw dust, T7(S3M1): 40x10cm + no mulch, T8(S3M2): 40x10cm + rice husk, T9(S3M3): 40x10cm + saw dust. The pea variety ‘Rachna’ was used for the study. Observations were recorded on growth parameters, yield attributes, yield, and economics. The results revealed that wider spacing of (40 × 10 cm) (S3) significantly improved growth parameters such as plant height(cm), number of branches, fresh and dry weight(g/plant) and number of nodules per plant. Among mulching treatments, rice husk mulch (M2) performed better than saw dust and no mulch by improving plant growth and yield attributes. The interaction effect showed that the combination of (40 × 10 cm) spacing with rice husk mulch produced the best overall performance in terms of growth and (30 x 10 cm) with rice husk (S2M2) in terms of yield parameter such as number of pods per plant, number of seeds per pod, pod length(cm), stover yield(q/ha) as well as harvest index (%). From the present study, it can be concluded that adopting wider spacing along with rice husk mulching is beneficial for improving the growth, yield, and economics of field pea under the agro- climatic conditions of Manipur.