Jyotimala Sahu, N.S. Thakur and Sourav Gupta
Abstract
An experiment was carried out under All India Coordinated Research Project on Safflower at College of Agriculture, Indore (M.P.) during Rabi 2013-2014 to investigate yield and agro-morphological traits of Safflower as affected by sowing dates and cultivars. The experiment was laid out in a Split Plot Design with 4 replications. The experiment consisted of 9 treatment combinations comprising 3 dates of sowing (1st November, 15th November, 30th November) as main plots and 3 cultivars (A-1, NARI-6, NARI-57 ) as subplots. The result showed that sowing of safflower on 1st November recorded significantly on agromorphological traits viz., minimum number of days for germination (10.50), highest germination percentage (88.30 %), higher plant height, higher dry matter accumulation, higher chlorophyll content (59.92), maximium primary branches (10.22 plant-1) and secondary branches (15.18 plant-1). The highest rate of seed yield (1701 kg ha-1), straw yield (5535 kg ha-1) and biological yield (7384 kg ha-1) in terms of sowing date belonged to treatment with sowing date of 1st November. The main results from this work indicated that the majority of agro-morphological traits and yield were significantly increased at the earlier sowing. Among the cultivars A-1 recorded earlier in number of days for germination (10.17), higher plant height, higher dry matter accumulation, more secondary branches (17.71 plant-1) and in terms of yield higher seed yield (1700 kg ha- 1), straw yield (5535 kg ha-1) and biological yield (7235 kg ha-1) over NARI-57 and NARI-6. But the cultivar NARI-6 noted significantly highest germination percentage (88.46 %), highest chlorophyll content (64.60) and more primary branches per plant (9.87). Further, it was observed that A-1 came out as most promising. The best sowing date and cultivar in terms of agro-morphological traits and yield was related to combination of 1st November sowing with cultivar A-1.