EFFECT OF DRIP IRRIGATION AND PLASTICMULCH ON GROWTH AND SEED YIELD OF FLEMINGIA SEMIALATA

Abstract

Flemingia semialata is a leguminous busy lac host plant. It is suitable for lac cultivation dueto its fast growth. The plant becomes ready for lac cultivation in one year.The seed ofSemialata is costly and not easily available. Hence, there is a need to make availability ofseed of Semialata economical and easy. Semialata is grown in Jharkhand in rain-fedCondition. But if it is grown under dripIrrigation in conjunction with plastic mulch thenhigher seed yield of semialata could beachieved. Therefore, in order to achieve aforesaid target, an experiment was conducted on effect of drip irrigation and plastic mulch on growth and seed yield of Semialata. Two types of plastic mulch (silver/black and green) weretested at three levels of irrigation (120%,100% and80%) with drip irrigation. Green plasticmulch transmits only warming wavelengths ofthe sun, but not those that allow weeds togrow. This plastic mulch results in warmer soilthan black plastic mulch resulting in faster development of plants. However, black plasticmulch is most widely used, available, andinexpensive of the colored mulches, blackplastic mulch has excellent weed suppressionability because of its opacity. The use of silverplastic mulch results in lesser insecttransmitted disease. The analysis of the datarevealed that the green plastic mulch has thehighest positive effect on shoot height growthamong the two plastic mulches with drip andfurrow irrigation at all irrigation levels.