Enrichment of Wheat Grains with Zinc Through Ferti-fortification

摘要

Wheat is a major staple food in the world, but it is generally low in grain Zn concentration especially when grown on Zn-deficient calcareous soils. The low level of Zn in wheat grains leads to many health related problems and disorders in the developing countries. Therefore, producing Zn enriched wheat grains at the farmers' fields is the best solution against human Zn deficiency. Keeping this in view the present investigation was carried out for two consecutive years (2009-10 and 2010-11) at research farm of Department of Soil Science, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana on a sandy loam soil and at village Jattpur in district Hoshiarpur on a loamy sand soil. The research was carried out with an objective to enrich grains of wheat cultivar PBW 550 with Zn applied through soil and foliar application. Various plant parameters viz. plant height, number of tillers per square meter and thousand grain weight showed edge with soil and foliar application of Zn over its control treatment. Our results reported that soil application of ZnSo4.7H2O @ 62.5 kg ha~(-1) and foliar spray of Zn chelates significantly increased the grain yield of wheat compared with untreated control at both the locations, however, increase was more on Zn-deficient loamy sand soil. Maximum wheat grain yield was produced with soil application of zinc sulphate followed by foliar spays with Zn chelates. The results further investigated that foliar application of Zn- HEDP (C) @ 2 gram liter~(-1) and Zn - HEDP (L) @ 3 gram liter1 further increased the grain Zn concentration over soil application of Zn sulphate.