Enhancing Wheat Yield and Phosphorus use Efficiency through Foliar Application in Calcareous Soil

Abstract

The experiment was conducted at Agricultural Research Farm of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Agricultural University, Peshawar during 2011-12 to evaluate the effect of foliar P on growth, yield and P uptake by wheat crop, respectively.. Soil P was applied in the form of TSP while foliar P was applied in the form of KH₂PO₄ with maximum concentrations of 1% P equally applied in three split doses at tillering, boot and anthesis stage of wheat crop c.v. Atta Habib. The foliar application of P showed significant effect on grains spike^-1, thousand grain weight, grain yield, biological yields and plant P and K and post harvest soil P. The grain yield increased from 2.12 to 2.60 t ha^-1 with 2 kg foliar P ha^-1 but further increases in P levels showed decreasing trend. Combination of soil and foliar application showed the supplemental effect in increasing the grain yield. Application of 20 kg soil + 2 kg foliar applied P ha^-1 increased the grain yield from 2.57 t ha^-1 to 2.92 t ha^-1 showing increase of 13.67 and 37.73 % over alone soil applied control, respectively. The biological yield showed 12.94 % increase over control with 2.0 kg foliar P but further increases in P doses again failed to do so. The post harvest soil P, and plant [P] and [K] at both boot and anthesis stage improved with foliar application of P. The comparatively higher performance by 20 kg soil+2 kg foliar P ha^-1 suggested that this could be the optimum level for wheat under the prevailing soil and climatic condition. However, such studies on diverse soil, crop and climatic condition should be conducted for confirmation of results and widespread recommendation.

Keywords: Wheat, Yield Foliar spray of KH₂PO₄