Effect of Sulphur on Yield and Biochemical Constituents in Groundnut (Arachis hypogaea L.) grown on Vertic Ustropept of Tamil Nadu

Abstract

A pot culture experiment was conducted with groundnut (CO 7) in a sulphurdeficient (7.19 mg kg-1) Inceptisol (Vertic Ustropept) at the Radioisotope(Tracer) Laboratory, Department of Soil Science and Agricultural Chemistry,Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore during October 2016 toJanuary 2017. The treatment structure comprised five levels of sulphur(0, 20, 40, 60, and 80 kg ha-1) along with the recommended fertilizer dose.The variation in yield and the changes in starch, sugars, cysteine, methionine,protein, and oil content with kernel development as influenced by thesulphur application were studied. The yield attributes viz., number of podspot-1, pod and kernel yield pot-1 and shelling percentage, were remarkablyinfluenced due to the application of sulphur up to 60 kg ha-1, which wascomparable with S @ 40 kg ha-1 and had an adverse effect with S @ 80 kgha-1. In all the stages of sampling (30 DAS, 15 DOP (75 DAS), 30 DOP (90DAS) and at harvest stage), starch, total sugars, reducing and non-reducingsugars of groundnut were found to decrease with increasing S levels withcontrol recording the highest value and S @ 60 kg ha-1 recording the lowestvalue. During crop growth, protein content and sulphur-containing aminoacids viz., cysteine, and methionine showed an increasing trend up to 60kg S ha-1 application and recorded comparable values with S @ 40 kg ha-1.Similarly, oil content in the kernel steadily increased with stages of kerneldevelopment. The highest oil content at all stages of kernel developmentwas recorded at 60 kg S ha-1.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.29321/MAJ.2020.000335

Pages

74 - 80

Creative Commons

Copyright

© The Author(s), 2026. Published by Madras Agricultural Students' Union in Madras Agricultural Journal (MAJ). This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited by the user.

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