Indian Journal of Plant Physiology

An experiment was conducted with chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) cultivar BG 209 to study the effect of ethrel applied as foliar spray at low (250 ppm), medium (500 ppm) and high (1000 ppm) concentrations at pre flowering (65 DAS: S₁), mid-flowering (94 DAS: S₂) and post-flowering (125 DAS: S₃) stages. The low and medium concentrations resulted in increase in dry matter over the control plants, though medium concentration was less effective than lower concentration at all the stages. Maximum leaf area was observed at lowest ethrel concentration at all stages and there was decline in leaf area with increasing ethrel concentration. Low concentration increased the pod number at S₁ (17%) and S₂ stages (11%), while at S₃ stage, a 22% reduction in pod number was observed. The medium concentration was slightly better than lower concentration when applied at S₁ stage, while at S₂ and S₃ stages it was inferior to lower concentration. High concentration at all the stages reduced pod number by 4, 8 and 27%, respectively. At higher concentrations, number of seeds decreased by 10, 18 and 46% at S₁, S₂ and S₃ stages, respectively. High concentration again decreased pod set from 3 to 24% depending upon stage of application, maximum decrease being at S₃ stage. High concentration reduced biomass production from 1 to 31% depending upon stage. At stage S₁ and S₂, low concentration increased yield by 11 and 14% respectively while medium concentration increased it by 14 and 2% at S₁ and S₂ stages, respectively. The percentage of flowers and pods shed in treated plants in comparison to control was more when plants were sprayed at post-flowering stage than pre-flowering and mid-flowering stages. The total number of pods formed at pre-flowering and mid-flowering stages show substantial increase over control with low and medium concentration, while high concentration registered a decrease.