Studies on the influence of nitrogen and phosphorus on certain growth, physiological and yield attributes of babycorn (zea mays)

Growing maize for vegetable purpose is a recent development for which baby maize called “Babycorn” has proved enormously successful as a venture in worldwide. An experiment was conducted at the Department of Horticulture, Annamalai University with Factorial Randomized Block Design(FRBD) which consist of 15 treatments which has different graded levels of Nitrogen at the rate of 100,125,150,175 and 200 kg ha-1along with Phosphorus viz., 40,60 and 80 kg ha-1 in addition to a constant dose of Potassium at the rate of 50 kg ha-1and the data were recorded for seven characters. Significant effects due to various individual and combined application of nitrogen and phosphorus levels has been observed in different growth, physiological and yield characters like plant height, number of leaves per plant, leaf area index, dry matter production, days to tasselling, chlorophyll content and ear yield. The data collected on different trials were analysed statistically and the range observed in plant height (30.35-60.05cm), number of leaves (6.91-11.35), leaf area index(2.32-3.42) dry matter production(8,112.33-12,422 kgha-1), days to tasselling (62.32-68.63) chlorophyll content (2.18-2.71mg g-1), ear weight(17.52-21.07 g) and ear yield (3.07-6.51t ha-1).