Exogenous application of liquid Seaweed extract through the root dipping technique in transplanted Finger millet (Eleusine coracana (L.)
1S. Seemansethupathi and *A. Kamaraj
1Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, Faculty of Agriculture, Annamalai University-608002 (India) *Corresponding author E mail: *Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, Faculty of Agriculture, Annamalai University-608002 (India) ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2706-113X
ABSTRACT
Root dipping of seedlings with sea weed extract is a simple and effective way to enhance the crop growth and seed yield. The current experiment was conducted on finger millet ‘CO15’ in a factorial randomized block design with three replication during season of 2021 at Srivilliputhur block, Tamil Nadu. Sea weed extract of Sargassum wightii was used in liquid formulation for root dipping. Treatments include two factors of which, Factor I consisted of different duration of root dipping of finger millet seedlings before transplanting (30 min, 45min and 60 min) and factor II comprised various levels of concentration of liquid seaweed (5%, 10%, 15% and 20%) along with control. The study was aimed to explore the concentration of seaweed extract and duration of root dipping that could potentially increase the seed yield and quality. The plant growth characters namely plant height, number of tillers/hill, leaf area index, dry matter production and yield attributes such as number of ear heads/hill, number of fingers/ear head, finger length, test weight, seed yield and straw yield were assessed. From the study, we have identified the interaction effect of seaweed extract @ 5% concentration and 60 minutes duration of root dipping showed yield increase of 17.7% over the control. Therefore, our study showed that T9 (root dipping of finger millet seedlings in 5% seaweed extract for 60 minutes) offered the scope of better performance in term of crop growth and seed yield over untreated control.