Abstract

A field experiment was conducted during rabi 2011–12 to study the effect of plant growth regulation and sowing time on growth and yield of kabuli gram. The experiment was laid out in split plot design with four replications. The main plots comprised three dates of sowing i. e. October 10, October 25 and November 10. The growth regulation practices viz., detopping, mepiquat chloride (MC) @ 250 ppm and MC @ 500 ppm applied as foliar spray at 40 and 70 days after sowing (DAS) along with unsprayed control were kept in sub-plots. November 10 sown crop produced significantly higher dry matter (39.5 g/plant), more number of primary (5.3) and secondary (17.3) branches, flowers (88.6) and pods (55) per plant, and grain yield (21.1 q/ha) than October 10 and October 25 sown crop. MC @ 500 ppm applied at 70 DAS produced significantly higher grain yield (18.13 q/ha) which was statistically at par with MC @ 500 ppm (17.47 q/ha) applied at 40 DAS. Detopping failed to influence the seed yield significantly over control. Higher concentration of MC significantly increased the number of branches, flowers and pods per plant than its lower concentration and detopping. Foliar application of MC significantly increased the total chlorophyll and chlorophyll ‘a’ content.