Vol. 11, Issue 2 (2022)

Author(s):
Kanhaiya Lal Regar, Vijay Kumar, Abhay Kumar Singh, MS Kundu, Atul Kumar and Santosh Kumar Singh

Abstract:
The nutrient Zinc (Zn) next to nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) is the most important nutrient that its deficiency is considered to be a serious widespread nutritional disorder of the world’s paddy fields which causes yield reduction ultimately reduced the farmer’s economy. The two years (2020-21 & 2021-22) of open field trial was conducted to explain the effect of Zn application in the ways of basal and foliar on growth, yield and economics of rice. The open field trial performed under randomised block design involved seven replication of three different treatments viz., T1: NPK- 130:40:20 kg ha-1 (Farmer’s Practice), T2: RDF (NPK-120:60:40 kg ha-1 + Zn @ 5.0 kg ha-1, and T3: RDF (NPK-120:60:40 kg ha-1) + foliar spray of 0.5% ZnSO4 at 25 DAT. The pooled results of two years trial revealed that basal application of RDF-NPK and Zn (T2) significantly improved the effective tillers per meter square (428.03), no of panicle per meter square (15.70) and grain yield (43.85 kg ha-1) followed by basal application of RDF-NPK + foliar application of Zn @5% at 25 DAT (T3) and farmers practice (T1: NPK- 130:40:20 kg ha-1). The highest grain yield recorded in treatment T2 was reflected to satisfactory net return after two years of investigation i.e., Rs. 41208.00 ha-1 followed by treatment T3 and T1. The two years of investigation can be concluded that in order to produce better crop performances and economics, the basal application of RDF-NPK and Zn@ 5.0 kg ha-1 was effective in semi arid region of Bihar.