STUDY ON SPECIFIC LEAF WEIGHT, LEAF TO PLANT WEIGHT RATIO AND HARVEST INDEX OF TUBEROSE CV. ‘PRAJWAL’ AS AFFECTED BY APPLICATION OF DIFFERENT ESSENTIAL HEAVY METALS

An experiment was conducted with graded levels of three different essential heavy metals viz., MnSO 4 (1000, 2000 and 3000 mg kg -1 soil), CuSO 4 (100, 200 and 300 mg kg -1 soil) and ZnSO 4 (200, 400 and 600 mg kg -1 soil) in addition to Control i.e., without external application of any essential heavy metals mentioned above.The experiment was carried out continuously for two years in polybag culture method and conducted with a Completely Randomized Design using three replications.The data recorded at every 90 days after planting (DAP) interval on dry weight changes of tuberose cv.'Prajwal' during different phases of vegetative growth were analyzed using OPSTAT software and the least significant difference was used to differentiate the treatments.Analysis of results indicated that soil application of ZnSO 4 @ 400 mg kg -1 soil recorded a significant improvement in specific leaf weight (0.37 g cm -2 and 0.49 g cm -2 respectively during 2018-19 and the pooled data analysis), leaf to plant weight ratio (0.63, 0.88 and 0.72 respectively during 2018-19, 2019-20 and the pooled data analysis) per plant.