Abstract

The productivity of black gram, a major short season grain legume can significantly be improved by selecting a suitable variety and matching the crop water requirement under irrigated dryland conditions. Therefore, a study was conducted during summer 2021 at Department of Agronomy, Agricultural College and Research Institute, Madurai, Tamil Nadu to identify the influence of different levels of irrigation to meet the optimum crop water requirement of high yielding varieties. The experiment was carried out in strip plot design with three irrigation regimes 100% ETc, 75% ETc, 50% ETc and five black gram varieties ADT 3, ADT 6, VBN 8, VBN 11, TBG 104 and each treatment was replicated thrice. Results indicated that, VBN 11 when irrigated based on 75% ETc recorded higher plant height (48.75 cm), number of branches per plant (19.08), leaf area index (4.02), SPAD values (48.60), pods per plant (42.62), seeds per pod (6.33) and 100 seed weight (4.70) with grain yield of 960 kg/ha and water use efficiency (2.87). Therefore, it could be concluded that, application of irrigation based on the ETc requirement can significantly increase the yield and performance of black gram variety VBN 11 with increased water use efficiency.