S.Shakya , S.M.Shakya , S.K.Sah and A.Srivastava

DOI

ABSTRACT

An experiment was conducted in Sunwal, Nawalparasi district of Nepal to assess the effect of plant population on bulb size and marketable yield of two onion varieties during rainy season of 2008. Two off season varieties of onion as main plot factor viz. Agrifound Dark Red (AFDR) and N-53 and six different plant populations (125, 100, 83.34, 66.67, 50 and 33.34 plants per m2 ) obtained by using different spacings of 10×8, 10×10, 12×10,15×10, 20×10 and 20×15 cm as sub plot factors were used as treatments and laid out in a split plot design with three replications. Marketable bulb yield of AFDR (25.55 mt ha-1 ) was higher than that of N-53 (19.78 mt ha-1 ). Marketable bulb yield was highest at closer spacing of 10×10 cm for both the varieties which was 26.97 mt ha-1 in AFDR and 22.48 mt ha-1 in N-53. The size of the bulbs increased with increase in spacing. The most preferred size of bulb was found to be of diameter between 3.5 to 5 cm whose yield was found highest (2.19 kg/plot) at the closest spacing of 10×8 cm which was not statistically different from that (2.17 kg/plot) at the spacing of 10×10 cm. The most preferred sized bulb yield showed a similar trend of increase as total marketable bulb yield with decrease in spacing. The spacings of 12×10, 10×10 and 10×8 cm produced total marketable bulb yields which were not significantly different from each other. The highest net return of Rs. 5,68,977 per hectare was found at the spacing of 12×10 cm for the variety AFDR.