Abstract:
An experiment entitled “Irrigation management for chickpea (
Cicer arietinum L.)†was conducted during
rabi season 2010-11 at Pulses Improvement Project, Mahatma Phule Krishi Vidyapeeth, Rahuri Dist. Ahmednagar (Maharashtra). In order to fulfill the objectives of the experiment seven treatments with three replications were laid out in randomized block design. The seed of deshi chickpea cv. Digvijay were dibbled at 30x10 cm spacing for ridges and furrows layout. Sowing was done on 28
th October, 2010. The relationship between yield of Digvijay chickpea, water use efficiency and consumptive use of water were determined. The differences due to irrigation treatments were found to be significant in respect to the growth parameters of chickpea were significantly higher when irrigation given at branching and pod development stage with furrows irrigation, while these parameters were decreased significantly when irrigated at flowering followed by branching stage. The yield attributes, seed and straw yield of chickpea per hectare were significantly highest when irrigation applied at branching and pod development stage with all furrows irrigated. The seed yield was significantly higher (26.92 q ha
-1) when irrigation given at branching and pod development stage with all furrows irrigated (T
6), but it was decreased as number and quantity of irrigation reduced. The growth functions
viz., absolute growth rate, net assimilation rate, crop growth rate were significantly higher when irrigation applied at branching and pod development stage with all furrows irrigated as compared to others. The quality parameters like protein content (23.80 %) and protein yield (6.41 q ha
-1) were significantly higher due to irrigation at branching and pod development with all furrows irrigated followed by irrigation given at pod development stage with all furrows irrigated (22.81 and 5.30 q ha
-1). The higher water use efficiency was recorded when irrigation given at pod development stage with all furrows irrigated (102.51 kg ha
-1 cm) as compared to other irrigation treatments. Irrigation scheduling at branching and pod development stage with all furrows irrigated (T
6) recorded higher gross monetary return (Rs.82558 ha
-1), net monetary return (Rs. 55,308 ha
-1) and benefit cost ratio (3.03) than rest of the treatments.