Influence of sowing time and direction on powdery mildew incidence and loss assessment

Abstract

A field experiment with three treatments of different sowing dates viz., 20^th October (D₁), 10^th November (D₂) and 30^th November (D₃), was conducted in Randomized Block Design with Factorial concept during rabi season of 2012 at Agronomy Instructional farm, Sardarkrushinagar Dantiwada Agricultural University, Sardarkrushinagar. The recommended fenugreek variety GM 2 was sown maintaining 30 cm distance between rows in a gross plot size of 4.5 m ⨯ 1.5 m as well as two directions of sowing viz., North-South and East-West. The result show that powdery mildew caused considerable reduction in agronomic characters like number of seeds per pods, weight of seeds per pods and 1000 seed weight which in turn causes considerable reduction in seed yield of fenugreek. Reduction of 22.8-25.6, 16.3-18.8 and 14.3-17.2 per cent in pods per plant, seeds per pod and test weight respectively was recorded when powdery mildew intensity in fenugreek was more than 80 per cent.