Effect of different irrigation intervals on growth and yield of chilli crop grown in sandy soil

A study was carried out to evaluate the effect of different irrigation intervals on growth and yield performance of chilli grown under dry weather condition in sandy soil of Batticaloa district. The experimental setup was a Randomized Complete Block Design of four treatments and five replicates. The treatments applied were; T1 (irrigated daily as control), T2 (at 3 days irrigation interval), T3 (at 5 days interval for first 12 weeks and then with 6 days interval) and T4 (at 7 days irrigation interval). Growth and yield attributes such as plant height, leaf area, number of branches, fresh and dry weight of plant shoots and roots and yield were recorded. The results revealed that, higher irrigation frequency had shown higher growth rate on crop characteristics such as plant height (64.3 cm), leaf area (28.48 cm2), shoot fresh weight (112.09g), shoot dry weight (28.01g), root fresh weight (12.58g), root dry weight (3.85g) etc. Further, the daily irrigation significantly increased the yield of chilli, whereas irrigation at 3 days and 5 days did not influence significantly. The yield was significantly lower for treatment with 7 days irrigation interval. The yield reduction was by 45.4% for 7 days irrigation interval from daily irrigated plots which was significantly higher. Study concluded that, daily irrigation shows highest desirable output for most of the parameters. Non-significant differences in growth characteristics were noticed for the T2 and T3, while 7 days irrigation interval (T4) shows the lowest performance on the growth characteristics of chilli. Therefore, daily irrigation is most suitable for sandy soils under dry weather conditions in this study area.