‘On Farm Testing’ of Wheat Cultivars for Site-specific Assessment under Varied Bio-physical Regimes in Mid-hill Conditions of Mandi District of Himachal Pradesh

To study the comparative performance of recently released as well as conventionally grown popular early, timely and late sown wheat varieties, ten ‘On Farm Assessment Trials (OFAT)’ were conducted during Rabi 2006–07, 2007–08 and 2008–09 at various locations in mid-hill region of Mandi district of Himachal Pradesh. Results of ‘OFAT’ revealed that HPW-251 as well as VL-829 were equally good performers under rainfed and irrigated early sown conditions with respective average grain yields of 2.65 and 2.73 t/ha under rainfed; and 3.21 and 3.05 t/ha under irrigated conditions. Timely sown wheat grown under rainfed conditions of Balh and Karsog valleys, HPW249, HPW-155 and HPW-236 recorded grain yield ranging between 2.37 to 2.67 t/ha, while under irrigated conditions of Balh and Karsog valleys, HPW-184, HPW-89, HPW-236, HPW-147 and VL-804 performed better in terms of productivity and profitability with average grain yield ranging between 2.82 to 3.83 t/ha with highest yield in HPW184. The results under late sown rainfed wheat indicated that HPW-42 recorded higher productivity over newly released variety HS-490, while new cultivars VL-892 and HS-420 were good performers under irrigated late sown conditions in terms of productivity and profitability over conventionally grown popular varieties HS-295 and HPW-42.