Abstract

Rice is the staple food for over half of the Indian population, hence great emphasis has to be laid on ways and means to fortify seeds organically for better seed vigour. Seed fortification is one of the important seed invigoration treatment. Germinated grains are good sources of ascorbic acid, riboflavin, choline, thiamine, tocopherols and pantothenic acid which increases the nutritional quality. Extract has been prepared from the sprouted pulses. Foliar spray is a very easy way to supply valuable nutrients to plants. With this background, an experiment was conducted in 2008 to study the effect of crop fortification with pulse sprout extract on crop growth and seed yield in rice seeds. Field experiment was conducted with the treatments which include foliar spray of rice crop with 3, 5 and 7% of horse gram sprout extract and 7, 9 and 11%, respectively of cowpea sprout extract and crop without foliar spray served as control. The observations made on crop growth and yield factors such as plant height (cm) at maturity stage, Dry matter production (g plant^-1), No. of tillers plant^-1, No. of productive tillers plant^-1, Chlorophyll content, Panicle length (cm), No. of seeds panicle^-1, 1000 Seed weight (g) and seed yield. Among these treatments foliar spray with 3% horse gram sprout extract recorded the highest yield of 4324 kg/ha whereas control recorded seed yield of 3603 kg/ha.

Key words: Rice crop, pulse sprout extract, foliar spray, Horse gram and cowpea