Finger millet performance affected by different nutrient management options under foothill condition of Nagaland

Abstract

The proposed experiment was performed in the kharif season of 2024 in the Agronomy farm of Nagaland University, SAS Medziphema Campus, entitled ‘Performance of finger millet [Eleusine coracana (L.) Gaertn. under different nutrient management practices in foothill conditions. The design used for the experiment was RBD (Randomised block design) with 8 treatments and 3 replications, which resulted in a total of 24 plots. Plant height increased with the advancement of crop age, with dwarf plants in the control treatment and treatments where only organic sources were used and all other treatments were statistically at par with each other. Leaf area index increased in all treatments up to 50 DAS and then decreased due to senescence of leaves. During 50 to 75 DAS, T8 treatment showed maximum CGR (1.79), which may be due to better availability of nutrients from FYM decomposition and improvement in soil aeration and temperature and the lowest CGR (0.98) in T1 treatment. At 50 DAS, maximum tillers (2.98) were found in the T2 treatment and minimum in the T1 (1.48) treatment. Maximum number of finger head-1 were found in T5 treatment (7.99), which was statistically at par with all treatments except T1. T3 treatment achieved maximum seed yield (2459.3 kg/ha), which was statistically at par with T2 and T4 treatment because of good photosynthesis area, which was indicated by leaf area index, good number of tillers.