Response of Varying Seedling Age, Transplanting Time and Foliar Supplements on Growth and Biomass of Rice

In India rice is mostly grown through transplanting method. Sometimes, transplanting is delayed due to late onset of the monsoon, lack of irrigation facility and labour scarcity which ultimately affect physiological growth and yield of rice crop. For managing this situation foliar spray at vegetative and reproductive stage may be an option to increase plant growth and productivity. Therefore, an experiment was planned during Kharif season 2022 and 2023 at N.E. Bourlag Crop Research Centre of G.B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar, Uttarakhand to find out response of seedling age, transplanting time and foliar nutrition on dry matter accumulation, plant height, crop growth rate and relative growth rate of rice. The experiment was laid out in split plot design with three replications. The experiment consisted of five treatments in main plot viz., N1: 25 days nursery transplanting on 25 June, N2: 25 days nursery transplanting on 2 July, N3: 32 days nursery transplanting 2 July, N4: 25 days nursery transplanting on 9 July and N5: 39 days nursery transplanting on 9 July and three foliar treatments in sub plot F0:control, F1: foliar spray of urea 2 % at active tillering stage followed by spray of MOP 1% at panicle emergence stage and F2: foliar spray of NPK 2 % at active tillering followed by spray of KNO3 1% at panicle emergence stage. Results of present study revealed that varying seedling age and transplanting time significantly influenced plant height, dry matter accumulation, CGR and RGR of rice. The maximum dry matter accumulation and growth was recorded in 25 days nursery transplanting 25 June(N1) treatment which was at par with 25 days nursery transplanting on 2 July(N2). The reduction in dry matter and growth was recorded with 39 days nursery transplanting on 9 July(N5) and 25 days nursery transplanting on 9 July (N4) treatments. Among foliar treatments, foliar supplements significantly improved growth parameters of rice as compared to control.