Effect of biofertilizers, fertility levels and weed management on chickpea under late sown condition

Abstract

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) can be a good alternate crop under late conditions after the harvest of long duration rice crop under rainfed condition. In recent years, the development of a number of chickpea varieties suitable for late planting and their introduction in rice-fallow areas have opened the avenues of chickpea cultivation under late planting condition. As late planted crop has low productivity due to restricted vegetative growth, management of fertilizers and weed under late sown condition may play important role in enhancing chickpea productivity. Simultaneous emergence and rapid growth of weeds along with chickpea in the field causes severe weed-crop competition for available resources during early growth stage. Weeds reduce grain yield of chickpea by 50-62 % (Ali and Kumar 2005). The better input management is equally responsible for higher biomass. production of weeds (Singh 2007). Since chemical fertilizers are not only in short supply but also expensive, there is need to supplement these with organic sources more particularly biofertilizers of microbial origin which are cheaper, pollution free and renewable (Mukherjee and Rai 2000). Keeping above facts in view, the present investigation was conducted to asses the effect of biofertilizers, fertility levels and weed management practices on performance of chickpea under late sown condition.