Effect of crop establishment methods on performance of different finger millet {Eleusinecoracana (L) Gaertn} varieties

Abstract

A field experiment was conducted during the kharif season of 2022 at the post-graduate experimental farm of the MS Swaminathan School of Agriculture, Gajapati, Odisha, to evaluate the effect of crop establishment methods on the performance of different finger millet varieties. The experiment was laid out in a strip plot design with three crop establishment methods {direct sowing, transplanting and system of crop intensification (SCI)} and four varieties (Arjuna, Bhairabi, Chaitanya and VL Mandua 352). The results revealed that SCI significantly improved growth parameters such as plant height, dry matter accumulation, number of tillers and leaf area index compared to other methods. Yield attributes including number of fingers per earhead, finger length, effective tillers, grains per earhead and earhead weight were also superior under SCI. Consequently, SCI recorded the highest grain yield (2,331 kg/ha), straw yield (4,873 kg/ha) and biological yield (7,205 kg/ha). Among the varieties, VL Mandua 352 performed the best, exhibiting superior growth, yield attributes and yield, followed by Chaitanya. The interaction effect between crop establishment methods and varieties was found to be non-significant for most parameters. Overall, the study highlights that adopting SCI along with high-yielding varieties like VL Mandua 352 can substantially enhance finger millet productivity under similar agro-climatic conditions.