Effect of Sulphur and Zinc Fertilization on Growth and Yield of Soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merrill] under Nagaland Condition

Background: A field experiment was conducted at the Experimental Research Farm of School and Agricultural Sciences and Rural Development (SASRD), Nagaland University, during the Kharif season of 2017 and 2018 to study the effect of sulphur and zinc fertilization for biofortification in soybean (Glycine max L. Merrill) under Nagaland condition. Methods: The experiment was laid out in a Factorial Randomized Block Design (RBD) with 15 treatments combinations viz sulphur (0 kg ha-1, 20 kg ha-1 and 40 kg ha-1), zinc (0 kg ha-1, 5 kg ha-1, 10 kg ha-1, 15 kg ha-1, and 20 kg ha-1) replicated thrice. Result: The results obtained showed that the plant growth and yield attributes were significantly influenced by the treatment combination of S20Zn20. The application of 20 kg S ha-1 showed higher plant height, number of leaves and branches per plant, shoot dry weight, leaf area index (LAI), crop growth rate (CGR), number of nodules and was found to be quite comparable with the treatment of 40 kg S ha-1. The zinc fertilization of 20 kg Zn ha-1 showed greater response by the plant and showed increased plant height, number of leaves and branches per plant, shoot dry weight, leaf area index (LAI) and number of nodules at par with 15 kg Zn ha-1. A higher number of pods (40.48 and 40.89), seed yield of (1.07 t ha-1 and 1.10 t ha-1) and stover yield (1.97 t ha-1 and 2.02 t ha-1) were observed in 20 kg S ha-1 and 20 kg Zn ha-1 fertilization respectively as compared to the other levels of treatments. However, the length of pods, number of seeds per pod, test weight and harvest index did not differ significantly by the treatments.