Effects of different plant densities on the yield and yield components of second crop sesame.

Sesame is one of the oldest and most important oil crops as main crop and second crop agriculture. This study was carried out to determine the effects of different row spacings and intra-row spacings on the yield and yield components on second crop sesame; was set up in Antalya West Mediterranean Agricultural Research Institue in 2009. Muganlı 57 sesame cultivar was used as plant material. The field experiment was set up in a split plot design and row spacings [30, 40, 50, 60 and 70 cm) were assigned to the main plots and and intra-row spacings [5, 10, 20 and 30 cm) were assigned to the subplots. Plant height, number of branch per plant, stem diameter, first pod height, number of pod per plant, number of seed per pod, thousand seed weight and seed yield were investigated. At the end of the research, row spacings and intra-row spacings were significant for branch number, stem diameter and first pod height, intra-row spacings were significant for number of pod per plant and seed yield, row spacing x intra-row spacing interaction were significant for first pod height and thousand seed weight. In general, wided row spacings and intra-row spacings, while decreased plant number per unit area, resulted in decreased seed yield The highest seed yield [1115.0 kg ha-1) was obtained from 30x5 cm plant density while the lowest seed yield [677.0 kg ha-1) was recorded from 70x30 cm plant density. As a result, in terms of seed yield for second crop sesame agriculture, 30 cm row spacing, and 5 cm intra row spacing are the most suitable plant densities