Effect of Zinc and Boron on Yield and Quality of Onion (Allium cepa L.) in Alfisols of Tamirabarni Tract

Abstract

A field experiment was conducted at Agriculture College and Research Institute, Killikulam, Tamil Nadu during rabi season of 2017-18 to determine the effect of zinc and boron along with soil test crop response (STCR) application of N, P and K for achieving better yield and quality of onion crop. The experiment was laid out in a randomized block design with three replications. The experiment consisted of eight treatments viz., T1 - Soil Test Crop Response (STCR) as 106:97:54 kg of NPK ha-1, T2 - STCR (106:97:54 kg of NPK ha-1) + ZnSO4 @ 25 kg ha-1, T3 - STCR (106:97:54 kg of NPK ha-1) + ZnSO4 @ 0.5% foliar spray, T4 - STCR (106:97:54 kg of NPK ha-1) + ZnSO4 @ 25 kg ha-1 + 0.5% foliar spray, T5 - STCR (106:97:54 kg of NPK ha-1) + borax @ 10 kg ha-1, T6 - STCR (106:97:54 kg of NPK ha-1) + borax @ 0.5% foliar spray, T7 - STCR (106:97:54 kg of NPK ha-1) + borax @ 10 kg ha-1 + 0.5% foliar spray, T8 – control. The results showed that yield parameters like bulb lets clump-1 (6.4), polar diameter (3.35 cm), equatorial diameter (2.98 cm), weight of bulb (85.2g) and bulb yield (16.85 t ha-1) and bulb qualities such as total soluble solids (15.7 o Brix), ascorbic acid content (13.95 mg 100g-1), protein (8.46%) and pyruvic acid content (4.82 μmol g-1) was better in application of STCR (106:97:54 kg of NPK ha-1) + ZnSO4 @ 25 kg ha-1 with 0.5% foliar spray. This treatment recorded the highest net income (Rs.254243 ha-1) and B:C ratio (4.07).

DOI

https://doi.org/10.29321/MAJ.2019.000262

Pages

293 - 296

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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