Yield assessment, N uptake and K_C development of green gram crop during wet season of India

ABSTRACT

Field experiments were conducted on the lateritic sandy loam soils of Kharagpur, India during June to August for the years 2015, 2016 and 2017. Supplemental irrigation supplied through subsurface drip and conventional furrow irrigation to evaluate green gram crop response under raised bed with and without plastic mulch and conventional ridge-and-furrow system. Lysimetric studies were conducted for two years (2016–2017) with and without plastic mulch for crop coefficient development. The yield response of green gram crop under raised bed with plastic mulch treatment was 36.20% and 19.90% higher than conventional ridge-and-furrow and raised bed without mulch treatment. Water use efficiency and N-uptake under raised bed with plastic mulch treatment was 6.57 kg ha⁻¹ mm⁻¹ and 80.22 kg ha⁻¹. Crop evapotranspiration (ET_C) under plastic mulch was 192.12 mm which was 7.17% less than non-plastic mulch condition. Crop coefficient (K_C) values for green gram crop during initial, crop development, mid-season and late season stages were 0.37, 0.76, 0.83 and 0.43 under plastic mulch, whereas 0.40, 0.82, 0.89 and 0.49 under non-plastic mulch. Overall study indicated that raised bed with plastic mulch can be used for green gram crop during rainy days with supplemental irrigation through subsurface drip.

KEYWORDS:

• Pulses
• field
• water use efficiency
• lysimeter
• irrigation

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge financial support of Information Technology Research Academy, Digital India Corporation (Media Lab Asia), Ministry of Communications and IT, Govt. of India, resources support of IIT Kharagpur for conducting this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.