EFFECT OF DIFFERENT LEVELS OF IRRIGATION AND NITROGEN ON YIELD AND QUALITY OF BIDI TOBACCO UNDER RAINFED VERTISOLS OF ANDHRA PRADESH

摘要

Bidi tobacco is generally considered as a drought tolerant plant. Higher yield and better quality of tobacco can be produced with less desirable soil moisture compared to excess soil moisture. Under the inadequate soil moisture conditions, tobacco canbenefit from timely application of water to bring the soil moisture up to or close to field capacity. An experiment was conducted in a split-plot design with three replications for three years (2007-08 to 2009-10) to find out the effect of irrigation and optimum level of nitrogen on growth, yield and quality of bidi tobacco. The pooled analysis indicated that more leaf length (41.5 cm), higher cured leaf yield (1741 kg/ha), higher net returns of Rs 39,935/ha and CBR of 1:1.90 were recorded with two irrigations. Fertilizing the crop with 130 kg N/ ha was at a par with 110 kg N/ha and resulted significantly higher plant height (70.7 cm), leaf length (41.4 cm), leaf width (17.4 cm) and cured leaf yield (1696 kg/ha) with net returns of RS. 37440 /ha. Application of 90 kg N/ha coupled with two irrigations found to be optimum for bidi tobacco. The economics of irrigation and nitrogen interaction indicated that the maximum CBR (1:1.80) with net returns of Rs. 37765/ha was produced with the application of 90kg N/ha with two irrigations. Chlorides content of leaf increased with increase in the levels of irrigations and it was significantly higher (1.33%) under two irrigations. Application of 130 kg N/ha recorded significantly higher nicotine content (4.98%) than 90 kg N/ha.