Effect of Fertilizer Levels and Foliar Nutrition on Growth and Yield of Soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merrill)

Improper nutrition being the major constraint of soybean fields in the state of Maharashtra, an investigation entitled “Effect of fertilizer levels and foliar nutrition on growth and yield of soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merrill)” was conducted during Kharif 2019 at Agronomy farm, College of Agriculture, Pune. The seven treatment combinations were laid out in factorial randomized block design and was replicated thrice. The results revealed that application of 100% GRDF has recorded significantly higher all the growth and yield contributing characters viz., plant height (58.94 cm), number of branches plant-1(6.67), leaf area plant-1 (29.10 dm2), dry matter plant-1 (24.30 g), number of pods plant-1 (62.80), number of seeds pod-1 (2.46), seed weight plant-1 (29.87 g), seed and straw yield (21.73 and 29.63 q ha-1, respectively). From the treatments chosen for the investigation, 1% foliar spray application with 19:19:19 recorded significantly higher growth and yield contributing characters namely, plant height (59.46 cm), number of branches plant-1 (6.95), leaf area (10.63 dm2), dry matter plant-1 (26.07 g), number of pods plant-1 (68.25), number of seeds pod-1 (2.70), seed weight plant-1(35.37 g), grain and straw yield (25.53 and 33.51 q ha-1, respectively).