Response of yield contributing characters of maize to irrigation and nitrogenous fertiliser

Abstract

A field experiment was carried out to study the response of maize to various irrigation regimes and nitrogenous fertilisers. Texturally, the experimental soil was silt loam having 36.78% sand, 50.93% silt and 12.18% clay, respectively. The experiment included 2 factors namely: (i) 5 irrigation regimes with IW/CPE (irrigation water applied divided by cumulative pan evaporation) ratio of 1.0 and was applied at one time at 37, 58, 75 and 90 days after sowing (DAS) in I1, I2 , I3 and I4 experimental plots, respectively, and (ii) 4 nitrogen doses, viz. 00, 70, 100 and 120 kg N/ha. The experiment was laid out in a split-plot design with 3 replications assigning 5 irrigation treatments to the main plots and 4 nitrogen levels to sub-plots at random. Yield and yield contributing characters were significantly affected by the application of irrigation and nitrogenous fertilisers. The highest grain yield of 6.88 t/ha was obtained with 90 DAS irrigation treatment and 7.61 t/ha by the application of 100 kg N/ha were found to be the best combinations for the grain yield of maize. The nutritional status like N, P, K and organic carbon slightly decreased at harvest compared with land preparation. This might be due to the uptake of plant nutrients during the entire growth period of maize crop.