Response of groundnut (Arachis hypogaea L.) to different levels and time of phosphogypsum nutrition

Groundnut is one of the most important oilseed crops of India. Improving productivity of groundnut to meet the domestic vegetable oil demand through balanced fertilization is the prime challenge lying before the agronomists in the country. With the aim of evaluating phosphogypsum as a source of sulphur nutrition in groundnut, a field experiment entitled “Response of groundnut (Arachis hypogaea L.) to different levels and time of phosphogypsum nutrition” was conducted at Agronomy field unit, University of Agricultural Sciences Bangalore, during kharif-2019.

Experiment was laid out in randomised complete block design (RCBD) with eleven treatments, of which eight have different combinations of phosphogypsum applied as basal and in split (30 DAS) and one with gypsum as basal alone. Whereas, the remaining two treatments, without any additional source of sulphur are included for comparison.

Among eleven treatments, application of phosphogypsum @ 125 kg S eq ha^-1 in split recorded highest yield attributes, pod yield (2063 kg ha^-1), kernel yield (1418 kg ha^-1) and sulphur uptake (11.33 kg ha^-1). Which were on par with 100 kg S eq ha^-1 in split (2014, 1380 and 10.39 kg ha^-1, respectively). All other treatments recorded lower values with lowest in treatments without any additional sulphur source.