Growth, yield and economics of Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) varieties as influenced by nipping

Introduction

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is India's most important rabi pulse crop, and it ranks as the second major pulse crop after pigeon pea. In India, it is cultivated over an area of 9.0 million ha producing 11.08 million tonnes with a productivity of 1231 kg ha -1 , contributing 35 to 42 per cent of the national pulses acreage and production, respectively. The chickpea production in the country had gone up from 5.5 to 11.9 million tonnes during the last five decades, registering a modest growth. No doubt, the chickpea productivity has steadily increased from 663 kg ha -1 to 1192 kg ha -1 in the same last five decades. However, Anonymous (2023) reported that the national productivity of chickpea was much lower than the average yield of improved chickpea varieties viz., GJG 0809 (16 q ha -1 ), GNG 1958 (26.8 q ha -1 ) and CSJ 515 (24 q ha -1 ). So, it is imperative to know the reasons for this yield gap. Among various low yield contributing factors, luxuriant growth of the chickpea plants may restrict the number of branches and yield attributes, ultimately causing lower yield. The overgrowth of the foliage can be reduced by nipping practice at specific stage of growth which may be helpful to decline the phenomenon of apical dominance and enhance the initiation of more branches and ultimately encourage more flowering, fruiting and grain formation and enhance the seed yield of the chickpea (Aziz, 2000) [1] . The crop growth and yield of chickpea varieties under nipping at various stages help to pick the most promising variety in terms of yield potential. The yield variation concerning different varieties may also be caused by variation in pod bearing ability and therefore the number of seeds per pod (Choudhary et al., 2020) [8] . There is a highly significant difference in the interaction of chickpea varieties with nipping which indicates that different varieties of chickpea reacted in a different way to nipping (Khan et al., 2017) [12] . In view of these facts, a field experiment was carried out to evaluate the effect of nipping practices on growth, yield and economics of chickpea varieties.

Materials and Methods

A field experiment was carried out on chickpea during rabi 2023-24 at Crop Research Centre 3 (CRC3), ITM University, Gwalior (Madhya Pradesh). The experimental field is situated in the Northern part of Madhya Pradesh, in the Gird zone, at the latitude of 26º13' North and longitude 76º14' East with an altitude of 211.52 meters above mean sea level. The soil of experimental field was sandy loam in texture having organic carbon 0.42%, available N 213 kg ha -1 , available P 2 O 5 12.7 kg ha -1 and available K 2 O 247 kg ha -1 . The average annual rainfall of this region is about 750 mm. The average temperature ranges from 4.0°C to 47°C. The experiment was conducted in a factorial randomized block design with two factors and replicated thrice. The first factor consisted of 4 nipping treatments viz., N0: no nipping, N1: nipping at 30 DAS, N2: nipping at 40 DAS and N3: nipping at 50 DAS; and the second factor comprised 3 varieties viz., V1: JG-12, V2: JG-16 and V3: JG-36. The full recommended doses of nitrogen (20 kg N ha -1 ), phosphorus (40 kg P 2 O 5 ha -1 ) and potassium (20 kg K 2 O ha -1 ) were applied at sowing. The chickpea crop was sown in lines 30 cm apart using a seed rate of 80 kg ha - 1 . Nipping was done at 30 DAS, 40 DAS and 50 DAS in the respective treatments. All other agronomic and plant protection measures were applied as per recommendations. The data on various growth characters, yield attributes, yields and economics were recorded under various treatments. The results were analyzed statistically to draw suitable inference as per standard ANOVA technique (Gomez and Gomez, 1984) [10] .

Results and Discussion

Effect of nipping on growth attributes and yield

Results in Table 1 confirm that chickpea plants had significantly more secondary branches (18.2 plant -1 ), leaf area index (5.56) and total dry matter production (696.0 g m -2 ) when nipping was done at 40 DAS followed by 50 DAS (16.6 plant -1 , 4.55 and 607.3 g m - 2 , respectively), 30 DAS (15.7 plant -1 , 4.20 and 606.3 g m -2 , respectively) and no nipping treatment (14.0 plant -1 , 3.67 and 515.3 g m -2 , respectively). The significantly higher number of secondary branches plant -1 in nipping treatments of chickpea might be due to the result of the apical region being clipped, which produced more secondary branches and stopped vertical growth because growth regulators, especially auxins, were effectively translocated to the secondary shoot buds, which normally remain dormant. By pruning the plant at various growth intervals, the energy that the plant had been using for temporary growth was redirected towards branching. If the source of auxins was removed by removing the apical portion through nipping, the secondary branches get activated below the clipped portion, which accelerates growth. This might be due to dispersion of carbohydrates or food materials toward the axillary vegetative buds below nipped portion. These results corroborate the findings of Gnyandev et al. (2019) [9] in chickpea. The similar results were also reported by Khan et al. (2018) [11] in chickpea. The lower number of secondary branches plant -1 in no nipping treatment (N0) might be due to inhibition of axillary buds by production of IAA in the apical portion. The higher dry matter production with nipping practices might be due to better utilization of available resources with nipping practices which resulted in more photosynthesis and hence more dry matter was produced. The production of dry matter depends on leaf area and photosynthetic rate of plant. The increased number of secondary branches plant - 1 might have offered higher chance for the increased production of more leaf area which reflected in more photosynthesis by leaves which subsequently resulted in higher dry matter production plant -1 . These results corroborate the findings of Choudhary et al. (2020) [8] and Kushwaha et al. (2023) [15] in chickpea. However, results in Table 1 also reveal that plant height (56.0 cm) and number of primary branches (11.5 plant -1 ) were significantly higher with no nipping treatment (N0) followed by nipping practices (N3) done at 50 DAS (48.8 cm and 9.5 plant -1 ), nipping practices (N2) done at 40 DAS (42.6 cm and 8.6 plant -1 ) and these parameters were significantly lower in nipping practice (N1) done at 30 DAS (35.7 cm and 7.4 plant -1 ). The reduction in plant height under nipping practices may be due to the removal of apical portion containing auxins which probably reduced apical dominance of auxins and arrested the vertical growth of plants and began to produce secondary branches instead of increasing plant height (Khan et al., 2018 and Bhavana et al., 2019) [11,5] . Data in Table 2 shows that the significantly higher grain yield (2473 kg ha -1 ), biological yield (6415 kg ha -1 ) and straw yield (3942 kg ha -1 ) were recorded with nipping practice at 40 DAS followed by nipping at 50 DAS (2177 kg ha -1 , 5942 kg ha -1 and 3765 kg ha -1 , respectively), 30 DAS (2008 kg ha -1 , 5486 kg ha -1 and 3478 kg ha -1 , respectively) and the lowest (1729 kg ha -1 , 4797 kg ha -1 and 3068 kg ha -1 , respectively) with no nipping treatment. The higher yield under nipping treatments might be because of the development of axillary buds which is inhibited by indole acetic acid (IAA) produced in the apical portion. When the source of auxins is removed by nipping, the lateral branching gets activated which resulted in increased number of pods plant -1 (Table 2) thereby increased grain yield (Bharathi et al., 2014 and Kithan and Singh, 2017) [4,14] . Increase in yield with nipping as compared with no nipping treatment clearly indicates that the energy which was previously used by plant to become taller was diverted towards grain formation. Grain yield depends on yield attributes i.e., number of branches (Table 1) and number of pods plant -1 (Table 2) that is why grain yield was higher with nipping practice at 40 DAS, 50 DAS and 30 DAS as compared to no nipping treatment (Kushwaha et al., 2022 and Khan et al., 2018) [16, 11] . The increased number of pods noticed with nipping practice at 40 DAS (103.5 plant -1 ) was mainly due to accumulation of more photosynthates which were utilized for production of more number of productive secondary branches and more number of pods plant -1 in chickpea (Aziz, 2000 and Khan et al., 2006) [2,13] . The nipping practice at 40 DAS might have efficiently altered the crop architecture by activating the dormant lateral secondary branches which ultimately increased the number to pods plant -1 which leads to greater chance for development of source and sink relationship in chickpea and thereby would have facilitated the significant increase in the yield attributes of the chickpea.

Effect of varieties on growth attributes and yield

Data in Table 1 clearly indicates that chickpea variety JG-16 registered greater plant height (48.3 cm), number of primary branches (9.8 plant -1 ) and secondary branches (16.9 plant -1 ), leaf area index (4.88) and total dry matter production (689.1 g m -2 ) followed by JG-36 (44.8 cm, 9.4 plant -1 , 15.9 plant -1 , 4.41 and 578.7 g m -2 , respectively) and JG-12 (44.2 cm, 9.2 plant -1 , 15.7 plant -1 , 4.2 and 550.8 g m -2 , respectively). Such variations in growth characters among chickpea varieties could be a genetic character of varieties (Gnyandev et al., 2019) [9] . Such varietal differences in number of branches might be due to higher growth of variety which was also reported by Merwade (2000) [17] , Gnyandev et al. (2019) [9] and Kushwaha et al. (2023) [15] in chickpea. The variation in dry matter production and leaf area index might be due to variation in overall growth and development of individual variety, which indicates more photosynthetic activity. The varietal differences in respect of dry matter production and leaf area index were also reported by Choudhary et al. (2020) [8] and Kushwaha (2022) [16] and Kushwaha et al. (2023) [15] in chickpea. The significantly higher grain yield (2233 kg ha -1 ), biological yield (5983 kg ha -1 ) and straw yield (3750 kg ha -1 ) were recorded in variety JG-16 followed by JG-36 (2062 kg ha -1 , 5577 kg ha -1 and 3515 kg ha -1 , respectively) and significantly the lowest in JG-12 (1995 kg ha -1 , 5420 kg ha -1 and 3424 kg ha -1 , respectively).This yield variation in respect of various varieties might be due to variation in pod bearing ability and vigorous growth as mentioned in Table 1. The higher yield of variety JG-16 could be attributed to greater growth parameters viz., secondary branches, more LAI and cumulative effect of yield attributes viz., number of pods (84.4 plant -1 ) and seed index (21.2 g). The variety JG-12 was a poor yielder because of its poor growth, yield attributes and canopy makeup (Choudhary et al., 2020) [8] . The differences in yield attributes observed among chickpea varieties might be due to their differences in growth habit and genetic yielding ability. Similar varietal difference in chickpea with respect to yield attributes was also reported in chickpea (Merwade, 2000 and Kushwaha et al., 2022) [17,16] .

Effect of nipping and varieties on economics

The economic analysis was done on the basis of crop yield and the existing market price (₹ 5400 q -1 ). Higher gross return (₹ 151131 ha -1 ), net return (₹ 98001 ha -1 ) and B:C (1.84) was found in nipping practice done at 40 DAS followed by nipping practice at 50 DAS (₹ 131936 ha -1 , ₹ 78806 ha -1 and 1.48, respectively), 30 DAS (₹ 124651 ha -1 , ₹ 71521 ha -1 and 1.35) and the gross return, net return and B:C were remarkably lower (₹ 102340 ha -1 , ₹ 58210 ha -1 and 1.32) in no nipping treatment of chickpea crop (Table 3). The main reason for higher gross return, net return and B:C ratio in nipping practice done at 40 DAS was the greater grain output when compared to the other nipping treatments and the absence of nipping. Similar results were also reported by Kushwaha (2022) [16] and Kushwaha et al. (2023) [15] in chickpea. Among varieties, significantly the higher gross return, net return and B:C (₹ 135358 ha -1 , ₹ 84478 ha -1 and 1.65, respectively) was recorded in JG-16 variety of chickpea as compared to JG-36 (₹ 125116 ha -1 , ₹ 74236 ha -1 and 1.45, respectively). However, minimum gross return, net return and B:C (₹ 122068 ha -1 , ₹ 71188 ha -1 and 1.39, respectively) was found in variety JG-12 (Table 3). The higher grain production of variety JG-16 compared to the other varieties was the primary cause of its higher gross return, net return, and B:C ratio. Such variations in economics among varieties were also reported by Kushwaha (2022) [16] and Kushwaha et al. (2023) [15] in chickpea.

Interaction effects on growth, yield and economics

The interaction of N2V2 (nipping at 40 DAS with variety JG-16) recorded a greater number of secondary branches (19.3 plant -1 ), higher LAI at 90 DAS (6.0), total dry matter production (822.9 g m -2 ) over all other interactions (Table 1). This might be due to nipping effects on apical bud of chickpea variety which resulted in production of more secondary branches, higher LAI, dry matter and cessation of vertical growth on account of effective translocation of growth regulators particularly auxins. Similar interactional effects of nipping practices and varieties were also reported by Khan et al. (2017) [12] and Kushwaha (2022) [16] and Kushwaha et al. (2023) [15] in chickpea. Similarly, the interaction effects of nipping at 40 DAS with variety JG-16 (N2V2) also recorded more number of pods (110.9 plant -1 ), seed index (21.9 g) and grain yield (2662 kg ha -1 ) over other treatment combinations (Table 2). The increase in yield attributes noticed in the interaction of nipping (40 DAS) with variety JG-16 was mainly due to accumulation of more photosynthates which were utilized for production of more number of productive secondary branches and more number of pods plant -1 in chickpea, reflected in higher yield (Khan et al., 2006) [13] . Similarly, the increase in yield of varieties with nipping as compared to no nipping treatment was due to the fact that the energy previously used by varieties to become taller was diverted towards grain formation by nipping (Sonboir et al., 2019 and Choudhary et al., 2020) [18,8] . The results also revealed that interaction of N2V2 (nipping at 40 DAS with variety JG-16) exhibited the higher gross return (₹162664 ha -1 ), net return (₹109534 ha -1 ) and B:C (2.06) over the rest of the interactions (Table 3). The main reason for higher gross return, net return and B:C ratio in interaction of N2V2 was the higher grain yield over the rest of the interactions. Similar results were reported by Sonboir et al. (2019) [18] , Kushwaha (2022) [16] and Kushwaha et al. (2023) [15] in chickpea.

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