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Effect of Zinc and Sulphur on Growth, Yield and Economics of Clusterbean [Cyamopsis tetragonoloba (L.) Taub.]

Clusterbean (Cyamopsis tetragonoloba L. Taub.) popularly known as guar, is a drought hardy and deep rooted legume crop grown for feed, fodder, green manure and vegetable purpose. Guar plant produces a cluster of flowers and pods, therefore, it is also known as cluster bean. It belongs to the family Leguminaceae and subfamily Papilinaceae and is known to improve soil fertility. Being a legume crop, it has the capacity to fix atmospheric nitrogen by its effective root nodules (Kumhar et al., 2012). It is generally 50-100 cm tall and bears 4 to 10 branches (branch type). However, non-branch type varieties have main stem only, which is heavily clustered with pods.


Introduction
Clusterbean (Cyamopsis tetragonoloba L. Taub.) popularly known as guar, is a drought hardy and deep rooted legume crop grown for feed, fodder, green manure and vegetable purpose. Guar plant produces a cluster of flowers and pods, therefore, it is also known as cluster bean. It belongs to the family Leguminaceae and subfamily Papilinaceae and is known to improve soil fertility. Being a legume crop, it has the capacity to fix atmospheric nitrogen by its effective root nodules (Kumhar et al., 2012). It is generally 50-100 cm tall and bears 4 to 10 branches (branch type). However, non-branch type varieties have main stem only, which is heavily clustered with pods.
The potential yield of most of the varieties ranges from 18-20 q/ha but the average yield productivity of the country is less than potential average. This may be ascribed to many reasons but inadequate and imbalanced fertilization is the major factor. Sulphur plays an important role in synthesis of S containing amino acid and thus not only increases the crop yield but also improves the crop quality. Clusterbean is highly responsive crop to micronutrients. The micronutrient in general and zinc in particular. Zinc is required for plant growth, as an activator of several enzymes and is directly involved in the biosynthesis of growth regulators such as auxin which promotes production of more plant cells and biomass that will be stored in the plant organs especially in seeds and their deficiencies may be one of the important reasons of poor yields in light textured soils (Singh and Raj, 2001). The work undertaken on these aspects in clusterbean is very meagre. Therefore, keeping this in view a study was conducted on effect of zinc and sulphur on growth and yields of clusterbean.
During the crop growing period, the mean weekly temperature values ranged between 30 to 43 ºC and 13 to 27 ºC for maximum and minimum temperatures. The rainfall received was 205.07 mm during the crop growing period. The experiment was conducted in RBD with three replications. The experiment consist of 16 treatments in which N and P were applied as per recommended dose (RNP: N= 20 kg/ha, P 2 O 5 = 40 kg/ha) along with different doses of Zn (10, 20 and 30 kg/ha) and S (20, 30 and 40 kg/ha) and their combinations. The sowing of clusterbean variety HG-2-20 was done on 14 th July, 2015 using seed rate of 15 kg/ha. Other agricultural practices were as per package of practices, CCS HAU, Hisar. The cropping history of the experimental field for the five years period prior to the present investigation is as under:

Effect of Zn and S on growth
Plant population differed with different nutrient treatments (Zn and S) and maximum plant population was recorded with the application of T 16 (RNP + ZnSO 4 @30 kg + S @40 kg/ha), but it was at par with T 15, T 14 and T 12 and the lowest value was obtained in T 1 ( Table 2). Increase in plant population with increase in Zn and S doses was due to the reason that Zn and S application created a balanced nutritional environment in the rhizosphere which enhanced metabolic activities and photosynthetic rate, resulting in improvement in plant stand and helps in maintaining plant population.
Plant height is an index of plant growth and it increased with advancement of crop growth. The higher doses of Zn and S increased the plant height over control. The maximum plant height (74.90 cm) was obtained from application of T 16 (RNP + ZnSO 4 @30 kg + S @40 kg/ha) as compared to the other nutrient treatments, while at par with T 13 (RNP + ZnSO 4 @20 kg + S @40 kg/ha) (74.86 cm) and T 15 (RNP + ZnSO 4 @30 kg + S @30 kg/ha) (74.86 cm). It was because the availability of Zn and S have stimulated the metabolic and enzymatic activity thereby increasing the plant height. Sulphur is constituent of glutathion, a compound supposed to play a part in plant respiration, hence increase plant height (Jordon and Reisenaur, 1957) and Zn play key role in stabilizing RNA and DNA structure and involves in biosynthesis of growth promoting hormones such as IAA and gibberellins (Mousavi, 2011). These results were in agreement with the findings of Kasturikrishna and Ahlawat (2000), Baviskar et al., (2012), Ramawtar et al., (2013). Addition of Zinc increases the plant height (Singh et al., 2014).
The accumulation of dry matter in clusterbean is a good index to express the photosynthetic efficiency of the plants. The dry matter accumulation per plant was influenced due to different nutrient treatments (Zn and S) and significantly higher dry matter accumulation 26.52 g/plant was obtained by applying T 16 (RNP + ZnSO 4 @30 kg + S @40 kg/ha) which was significantly superior to rest of treatments, but at par with T 13 (RNP + ZnSO 4 @20 kg + S @40 kg/ha) (26.35 g/plant) and T 10 (RNP + ZnSO 4 @10 kg + S @40 kg/ha) (26.23 g/plant) because Zn and S application created a balanced nutritional environment which enhanced metabolic activities and photosynthetic rate, resulting in improvement in plant height and ultimately accumulation of dry matter. Similar types of results were reported by Meena et al., (2006), Ramawtar et al., (2013).

Effect of Zn and S on yield attributes and yields
Successive increase in sulphur and zinc fertilization up to 40 and 30 kg/ha respectively, significantly improved the yield attributes viz., no. of pods/plant, no. of grains/pod, test weight; and grain and straw yield of clusterbean ( Table 2). The number of pods/plant was significantly influenced due to Zn and S levels and the highest number of pods per plant (43.73) was recorded with T 16 (RNP + ZnSO 4 @30kg + S 40kg/ha) as compared to rest of the treatments, but it was at par with T 13 (RNP + ZnSO 4 @ 20 kg + S @ 40 kg/ha). The number of grains per pod increased with successive increase in doses of Zn and S
The improvement in growth might be due to the fact that application of S improves overall nutritional environment in rhizosphere by improving not only the availability of S, but it also reduced the pH, which is the principle reason for availability and mobility of nutrients specially of P, Fe, Mn and Zn (Hilal and Abdelfattah, 1987). The improvement in nutritional environment ultimately resulted in better plant metabolism and photosynthetic activity improved yield components. The grain yield being the function of cumulative effect of yield attributes, increased significantly due to addition of S.
Application of higher doses of Zn and S increased grain yield. Significantly higher grain yield (1062 kg/ha) was recorded with application of T 16 (RNP + ZnSO 4 @30 kg + S @40 kg/ha) than other nutrient treatment, while it was at par with T 15 (RNP + ZnSO 4 @30 kg + S @30 kg/ha (1060 kg/ha) and T 13 (RNP + ZnSO 4 @20 kg + S @40 kg/ha (1059 kg/ha). Clear disparity in grain yield was noticed between zinc and sulphur treatments. Among all the zinc treatments tried, ZnSO 4 @30 kg resulted in higher grain yield (873 kg/ha) irrespective of zinc management practices, S (40 kg/ha) resulted in higher grain yield (998 kg/ha). All nutrient treatments provided significantly higher straw yield compared to the treatment of control. Straw yield among the different treatments was significantly higher in T 16 (RNP + ZnSO 4 @30kg + S @40 kg/ha) (3145 kg/ha) as compared to other nutrient treatments, which was at par with T 13 (RNP + ZnSO 4 @20 kg + S @40 kg/ha).
Sulphur of chloroplast protein resulted in greater photosynthetic efficiency which in turn translated in terms of increase in yield (Karche at el., 2012). Similar results were also reported by Singh and Mann (2007) and Baviskar et al., (2010). Zinc play an important role in biosynthesis of indole acetic acid which is responsible for initiation of primodial for reproductive parts and partitioning of photosynthesis towards them which resulted in better yield (Srivastava et al., 2006, Ram andKatiyar, 2013).
Application of T 16, T 15 , T 13 and T 12 treatments increased the grain yield by 32.58, 32.33, 32.21 and 29.34 percent and straw yield by 25.9, 24.9, 25.78 and 24.70 percent, respectively over control i.e., T 1 treatment ( Fig. 1). Even in treatment T6 and T7 where sulphur is applied @ 30 and 40 kg/ha (along with recommended dose of N and P) respectively, gave 23.35 and 24.59 percent higher grain yield and 15.81 and 18.49 percent higher straw yield respectively over control.
Significantly higher harvest index of 25.89% was observed with application of T 8 (RNP + ZnSO 4 @10 kg + S @20 kg/ha as compared to control (24.28%). It may be attributed to the fact that gypsum as sulphur source possibly enhances sulphur availability faster to plants as compared to control. Similar results were found by Yadav (2004) and Kumawat et al., (2006).
Based on the results of experiment, it can be concluded that T 16 (RNP + ZnSO 4 @30 kg + S @40 kg/ha) resulted in better growth parameters, yield attributes and yields, and economics except harvest index higher in T 8 (RNP + ZnSO 4 @10 kg + S @20 kg/ha), and net returns higher in T 10 (RNP + ZnSO 4 @10kg + S @40 kg/ha). So clusterbean crop has shown immense potential to respond toward Zn and S fertilization. Application of Zn and S with recommended dose of N and P improved the growth parameters, yield attributes and yields, and economics.