Effect of foliar application of plant growth regulators on growth, yield and quality of garlic (Allium sativum L.)

The present investigation was conducted at Instructional Farm, Department of Vegetable Science, Dr. Panjabrao Deshmukh Krishi Vidyapeeth, Akola (Maharashtra) during the rabi season of the year 2022-23, with a view to find out suitable plant growth regulators with concentration for better growth, yield and quality of garlic under Akola conditions. The experiment was laid out in Randomized Block Design (RBD) with ten treatments viz., T1-NAA @ 50 ppm, T2-NAA @ 100 ppm, T3-NAA @ 150 ppm, T4-GA3 @ 50 ppm, T5-GA3 @ 100 ppm, T6-GA3 @ 150 ppm, T7- Kinetin @ 10 ppm, T8- Kinetin @ 20 ppm, T9- Kinetin @ 40 ppm and T10- control and with three replication. An observation in respect of growth parameter, yield and yield attributing characters and quality parameter were recorded. The results of this experiment revealed that, the growth parameters such as plant height, length of leaves, number of leaves and neck thickness were observed significant at different levels of growth regulators i.e. NAA, GA3 and kinetin. It was found that, maximum values of these characters were recorded with an application of GA3 @ 150 ppm. The yield and yield attributes like weight of bulb, number of cloves per bulb, length of cloves, clove index, bulb diameter, yield per plot and yield per hector 114.17 (q ha-1) were found maximum with an application of GA3 @ 150 ppm. The quality attributes like TSS, reducing sugar, non-reducing sugar, and total sugar were found maximum with an application of GA3 @ 150 ppm. As regards to the gross monetary return, net monetary return and B:C ratio, it was obtained maximum (3.05) with the foliar application of GA3 @ 150 ppm.