Vol. 10, Issue 2 (2021)

Author(s):
Chendrababu Naidu A, GS Madhu Bindu, M Malla Reddy and M Uma Devi

Abstract:
The experiment was conducted to evaluate the performance of various legume green manure crops viz., green gram, black gram, horse gram, cowpea, sunhemp, dhaincha, and pillipesara for biomass production at the College farm, College of Agriculture, Rajendra Nagar during rabi, 2020-21. The focus of the research was to look at how green manure crops grew in terms of plant height, leaf area, nodule count, and dry matter production up to the 50 percent flowering stage with respect of fertilization. Fertilization to green manure crops with recommended doses certainly had a favourable effect on plant height which increased to the tune of 16.7 cm as against unfertilized conditions (12.2 cm). Fertilization has brought about a significant increase in the leaf area 41.1 & 377 cm², respectively) of the green manure crops over the unfertilized treatments at both 30 DAS & 50% flowering stage. In both fertilized and unfertilized crops, the leaf area has increased to about 89% during the 50% flowering stage over that recorded at 30 DAS. The effective nodule count among the green manure crops ranged from 3 to 16 at 30 DAS and 2 to 29 at 50% flowering stage. The fertilization to green manure crops demonstrated a significantly higher number of nodules at both 30 DAS (9) and 50% flowering stage (12) than the unfertilized crops (30 DAS - 7; 50% flowering stage - 10). Fertilization to green manure crops remarkably has increased the total dry weight up to 24.05% over the unfertilized crops. Sunhemp and cowpea proved to be good for rabi sowing, with good plant stature, higher leaf area, and much better dry matter production, according to the study's findings.