GROWTH AND YIELD OF MUSTARD AS AFFECTED BY VERMICOMPOST WITH DIFFERENT LEVELS OF FERTILIZER

Abstract

The experiment was conducted at the Agronomy farm of Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University, Bangladesh to find out the growth and yield of mustard as affected by vermicompost with different levels of fertilizer during the period from November 2021 to March 2022. Two factors experiment was laid out in Split Plot Design with three replications. Three mustard varieties viz. V 1 ii (BARI sarisha-14), V 2 (BARI sarisha-16) and V 3 (BARI sarisha-18) in association with four treatments of inorganic fertilizers with or without vermicompost viz. control treatment T 0 (RDF), T 1 (RDF + vermicompost 2.5 t ha -1 ), T 2 (75% RDF + vermicompost 2.5 t ha -1 ) and T 3 (50% RDF + vermicompost 2.5 t ha -1 ) were considered for the present study. Among three varieties, V 3 (BARI sarisha-18) showed best performance for most of the parameters and gave the highest shoot fresh weight plant -1 , shoot dry weight plant , SPAD value, siliqua length, number siliqua plant -1 , 1000-seed weight, seed yield, stover yield and harvest index compared to V 1 (BARI sarisha-14) and V 2 (BARI sarisha-16). However, among the different treatments applied to mustard, T 1 (RDF + vermicompost 2.5 t ha -1 ) showed best results on different growth yield contributing parameters and yield of mustard and gave the highest plant height, number of leaves plant -1 , shoot fresh weight plant -1 , shoot dry weight plant -1 , SPAD value, siliqua length, number of siliqua plant -1 , number of seeds siliqua -1 , 1000-seed weight, seed yield, stover yield and harvest index compared to other treatments. Regarding treatment combination of variety and inorganic fertilizer with vermicompost, V 3

showed the best performance on different growth, yield and yield contributing parameters in comparison to other treatment combinations. The maximum shoot fresh weight plant -1 (354.30 g), shoot dry weight plant -1 (39.61 g), siliqua length (8.39 cm), number of siliqua plant -1 (154.30), 1000-seed weight (4.55 g), seed yield (2480.00 kg ha -1 ), stover yield (2813.00 kg ha -1 ) and harvest index (46.80%) were obtained from the treatment combination of V 3 T 1 whereas the lowest was from the treatment combination of V 1 T 3 . So, it can be concluded that the application of (RDF + vermicompost 2.5 t ha -1 ) to the variety BARI sarisha-18 can be considered to achieve higher mustard yield.