Varietal Performance of Jute (Corchorus capsularis L.) Based on Crop Growth and Yield in the Coastal Region of South Bengal

Jute (Corchorus spp.) is considered as the main cash crop in the history of Bengal and second most important natural fibre crop in the world next to cotton. It is becoming popular in the textile industry as a replacement for synthetic fibres. However, despite improvements in production technique, jute yields have been steadily declining in recent decades due to unavailability of sustainable, promising varieties, and yield complexity of any crop, which is greatly influenced by a number of genetic factors and environmental fluctuations. Keeping this in view, a field experiment was carried out at the Instructional Farm, School of Agriculture and Allied Sciences, The Neotia University to study the performance of few capsularis jute varieties in the coastal region of South Bengal during the pre-kharif season of 2023. The soil of the experimental field was fine textured clay type, having 213.6 kg/ha available N, 22.08 kg/ha available P₂O₅, 312.26 kg/ha available K₂O and 0.46 % organic carbon. Experiment was conducted in Randomized Complete Block Design and the treatments were comprised of six capsularis jute varieties namely JRC 9057, JRC 80, JRC 517, JRC 532, Monalisa and JRCJ 11. Results revealed that there was statistically significant variation in crop growth parameters and yield attributes under JRC 9057 during the study period. JRC 9057 resulted in maximum plant height, leaf plant^-1 and aerial dry biomass at harvest. Furthermore, JRC 9057 outperformed all other tested jute varieties in terms of fibre yield (25.25 q ha^-1), stick yield (66.44 q ha^-1), and harvest index (29.57%) as well as highest profitable return. Therefore, variety JRC 9057 is the most economically viable alternative among all other tested capsularis varieties in the region.

Production of environment friendly fibre crops for outdoing synthetic fibres.

Understanding superiority among jute cultivars based on growth and yield.

Identification of long-term promising jute varieties considering climate change issues.