EFFECT OF VERMIWASH ON THE GROWTH OF CAPSICUM ANNUUMKulkarni Rajender Rao, Juliana Silveira, Naik Anjali, Naik Sneha, Raikar Sutisha and Rekdo SavitaAbstract Earthworms have a critical influence on the soil structure, forming aggregates and improving the physical conditions for the plant growth and nutrition uptake. Earthworms consume large quantities of organic matter such as agro waste, kitchen waste, nitrogen rich materials like cattle dung and excrete casts which have several growth promoters, enzymes which enrich the soil with bacteria and vesicular arbuscular mycorrhizae (VAM) beneficial for the plant growth. Vermiwash is a liquid manure collected from the compost unit after the passage of water through a column of worm action and is useful both as foliar spray or for soil application. In the present investigation an attempt was made to study the effect of vermiwash on the growth parameters of chilli plant Capsicum annuum. In plot 4 with vermiwash and drip irrigation technique maximum increase in growth parameters such as root length 11.0 cm, stem length 70.0 cm, number of leaves 120.0, side root length 05.0 cm leaf length 06.5 cm, leaf width 03.2 cm, number of flowers 46.0, number of chillies 43.0 were observed and established with nearly perfect correlation coefficient of 0.992. between root length and stem length. |