EFFECT OF BIOFERTILIZER ON THE GROWTH AND YIELD OF CHICKPEA (Cicer arietinum L.)

Abstract

An experiment was conducted at the Research field of Crop Physiology and Ecology Department of Hajee Mohammad Danesh Science and Technology University, Dinajpur during December 2017 to April 2018 to evaluate the effect of biofertilizer on the growth and yield performance of chickpea. The experiment was carried out in Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with three replications. The studied chickpea varieties BARI Chola 3, BARI Chola 5, BARI Chola 9 and a Local variety were tested with two treatments, i.e. control (no biofertilizer) and with biofertilized condition. The observations were made on plant height, shoot dry weight, leaf dry weight, root dry weight, number of leaves plant1 , number of nodules plant-1 , number of flowers plant-1 , number of pods plant-1 , pod weight plant-1 , seed weight, 100 seed weight, grain yield, total dry matter content and stover yield. The highest grain yield (3.12 t ha-1 ) was observed in BARI Chola 9 under biofertilized condition, whereas the lowest grain yield (1.41 t ha-1 ) was found in local variety under controlled condition. In most of the cases, BARI Chola 9 showed the best performance with biofertilizer and local variety showed the lowest performance with controlled environment. However, the order of positive response of biofertilizer based on grain yield was BARI Chola 9 > BARI Chola 5 > BARI Chola 3 > Local Chola variety