Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

EFFECT OF ZINC FERTILIZATION ON YIELD, ZINC BIOFORTIFICATION AND INDICES OF WHEAT VARIETIES

Prateek Kumar, Saroj Kumar Prasad, Deepak Kumar Yadav, Brijesh Kumar and Rakesh Kumar Maurya

Abstract

A field experiment was conducted during winter (rabi) season of 2017–18 at Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh tostudy the effect of zinc fertilization on yield and zinc concentration of wheat varieties. The experiment waslaid out in a randomized block design (factorial) with 7 wheat varieties (HUW 234,V1; HUW510,V2; HUW468,V3; HD 2967,V4; PBW 343,V5; PBW 373,V6; and PBW 154,V7) and 2 zinc levels (0 kg Zn ha-1, Z0; and 5 kgZn ha-1,Z1). HUW 234 and application of zinc @ 5 kg/ha recorded significantly highereffective tillers,1,000-grain weight, yield, zinc uptake, partial factor productivity (PFP), agronomic efficiency (AE) andrecovery efficiency (RE) over the other treatments. Varieties and zinc levels also interactedpositively andhighest effective tillers, ear length, test weight and grain yield was obtained with V1 × Z1;however, thelongest ear length (17.37 cm) was obtained with PBW 154 + 5 kg Zn ha-1 while highest number of grains perspike was recorded with HUW 468 + 5 kg Zn ha-1.