EFFECT OF SOURCES AND LEVELS OF NITROGEN ON MORPHOLOGICAL ATTRIBUTES AND DRYMATTER PRODUCTION OF KALMEGH (ANDROGRAPHIS PANICULATA (BURM. F.) WALL. EX NEES) UNDER RAINFED CONDITIONS OF MALWA PLATEAU

摘要

Kalmegh is an important medicinal crop belonging to family Acanthacea used in Ayurvedic and Homeopathic formulations for curing large number of ailments of human beings like chronic maieria, jaundice, anaemia, ulcers etc. It shows ant-diarrhoeal activity against E. coil (Gupta et al. 1990) and it can be administred as an antipyretic drug in febrii conditions in animals (Kanniappam et al., 1991). It is found through out the plains of Himachal Pradesh to Assam, Mizoram, Bihar, Gujarat and also in SouthIndia. The wide spread occurence of the plant indicated that it can be grown successfully in wide range of agro-climatic conditions and also under rainfed conditions particularly in Malwa region of Madhya Pradesh. Previously it was found abundantly in forest but due to continuous and illegal exploitation, it has reached to an endangered level in most of its natural habitat. There is no information available so far regarding the use of organic manures for nitrogen nutrition on kalmegh. An experiment wastherefore conducted at Research farm, AICRP on Medicinal and Aromatic Plants, College of Agriculture. Indore in randomized block design with eleven treatment combinations in three replications during the kharif season of 2000. The experimental soil wastherefore shallow black having pH 8.0 with available N, P_20_5 and K_2O contents 199, 9.6 and 663 kg/ha, respectively. Five sources with two levels of nitrogen were tried with a control (no nitrogen applied). Full dose of organic manures was applied at the time of field preparation. Urea was applied after transplanting the 30 days old seedlings. Sowing was done on 15 July and harvesting of crop was done at ground level, on 20 November. The herbage was completely dried and weighed to record dry matter production. The yield attributes like plant height, number of primary and secondary branches were recorded at the time of harvesting by 10 randomly selected plants per plot.