Effect of sulphur on growth, yield and quality of garlic (Allium sativum L.)

Garlic (Allium sativum L.) is one of the important commercial vegetable crops of India. Sulphur has been recognised as an important nutrient for higher yield and quality of vegetable crops, including onion and garlic. Keeping this in view, a field experiment was conducted during rabi-2014-15 at Faculty of Agriculture, Wadura, Sopore, SKUAST-Kashmir to study the effect of varying levels of sulphur on growth, yield and quality of garlic cv. Local. The sulphur in the form of gypsum was tried at six levels, Viz., T1= (0 kg ha-1), T2 = (15 kg ha-1), T3= (30 kg ha-1), T4= (45 kg ha-1), T5= (60 kg ha-1) and T6= (75 kg ha-1) in a randomised block design with four replications. The results on growth, yield, quality attributes and shelf life of onion revealed significant variations among levels of sulphur. The results depicts an improvement/enhancement in all characters under study upto 45 kg ha-1 and thereafter exhibhited a decline. Sulphur @45 kg ha-1 (T4) recorded maximum values for plant height (87.00 cm), No. of leaves per plant(17.33), leaf length(44.33),leaf width(2.55), polar diameter (3.08cm),equatorial diameter,(4.54 cm),average bulb weight(218.66g),no. of cloves (55),Average clove weight(188.33),total bulb yield(173.33qtls) marketable yield (125qtls) T.S.S.(30.81),pyruvic acid(47.62 µmol g-1) Maximum uptake of nitrogen (78.00 kg ha-1), phosphorus (22.61 kg ha 1), potassium (66.08 kg ha-1) and sulphur (24.13 kg ha-1) was also recorded with 45 kg S ha -1 (T4) besides recording a minimum storage loss of 14.70%. Pseudo stem length (3.23cm), scape length (38.66 cm) were found maximum with treatment T6 (75 kg ha-1).