Effect of organic amendments and fertigation on growth, yield of watermelon (Citrullus lanatus Thunb.) grown in and soil fertility of Theri land (Red sand dune) of southern Tamil Nadu

Abstract

The present investigation was carried out at Thirumaraiyur village, Sattankulam taluk, Thoothukudi district to study the effect of organic amendments with recommended dose of fertilizers on growth and yield of watermelon in Theri soil (red sand dunes) during the year 2017 and 2018. The experiment was laid out in Randomized Block Design with Factorial concept (FRBD). In all there were three factors as organic amendments with 6 treatment combinations for each factor, which were assigned at random in each plots with three replications. The recommended dose of fertilizers in treatments were two levels as 75 and 100 per cent. Among the treatment combinations, the tank silt application @ 100 t ha-1 with 100 per cent recommended fertilizer as 200:100:100 kg of NPK ha-1 through fertigation at 7 days interval (A1N5) produced maximum number of branches (10.67), longest vine (362.0 cm), number of fruits plant-1 (2.57), weight of fruit (5.27 kg), fruit yield (68.77 t ha-1), gross return ( 4,09,320/ha), B:C ratio (2.45), uptake of NPK 39.79, 4.04 and 30.49 kg ha-1, respectively) compared to other treatments. Significant built build up of organic carbon (0.52%), available N (253.47 kg ha-1), P (16.40 kg ha-1) and K (218.40 kg ha-1) were registered with the application of tank silt application @ 100 t ha-1 with 100 per cent recommended fertilizer as 200:100:100 kg of NPK ha-1 through fertigation at 7 days interval (A1N5)

DOI

https://doi.org/10.29321/MAJ.2019.000296

Pages

542 - 549

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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