Abstract

Adequate and balance irrigation along with proper nutrition controls grain yield of crop. Based on this, carried out the experiment to evaluate the effect of drip irrigation scheduled viz., DI₁: once-in-2 days, DI₂: once-in 3 days, DI₃: once-in 4 days and DI₄: surface flooding method (Farmers’ practice); agronomic biofortification of zinc viz., Zn₀: no application of zinc, Zn₁: soil application of zinc sulphate at 20 kg ha^-1, Zn₂: foliar application of nano zinc oxide at 40 ppm, Zn₃: seed priming of zinc oxide at 40 ppm and Zn₄: seed coating of nano zinc oxide at 40 ppm on yield contributing parameters and grain yield of the maize during summer seasonn of 2022 and 2023 at Agricultural Farm, Palli Siksha Bhavana, Visva-Bharati, West Bengal. Increasing frequency of drip irrigation scheduled significantly increased yield components and increased grain yield of maize. Biofortification of nano zinc oxide as seed coating enhanced yield parameters, grain yield. Correlation studies pointed out that grain numbers row^-1, length of cob, girth of cob, weight of cob and seed weight cob^-1 were highly significant and positively correlated with grain yield exept number of grains-rows cob^-1. Results also revealed that a highly positive and significant correlation was between grain yield with seed weight cob^-1 (0.744^*** and 0.867^***) during 2022 as well as 2023. It is rational to conclude that number of grains row^-1, cob length, cob weight and seed weight cob^-1 are the major contributors towards grain yield since these characters had high positive correlation.

Pramanik, K., Aktar, S.N., Dhakre, D.S., Bhattacharya, S., 2024. Response of yield formation of maize (Zea mays L.) to different drip irrigation scheduled and nano zinc oxide biofortification in sandy loam soil. Research Biotica, 2024, online first.