Influence of Land Configuration, Seed Rates, and Variety on Physiology and Yield of Rainfed Soybean in Semi-Arid Tropics of Central India

The present experiment was conducted under the ongoing ‘All India Coordinated Research Project’ (AICRP) for Dry Land Agriculture at the College of Agriculture, Indore to study the effect of land configuration, seed rates, and variety on the physiology of soybean in Central India. The study was carried out with 3 main plot treatments (3 land configurations i.e. L1- Flat sowing-45 cm, L2- Raised bed of 90 cm with 3 Rows bed-1 and L3- Raised bed of 60 cm with 2 Rows bed-1) and 4 subplot treatments (2 varieties of soybean i.e. V1-RVS 2001- 4 and V2-JS335; 2 seed rates i.e. S1-60 kg ha-1 (75% of Normal seed rate) and S2 40 kg ha-1(50 % of Normal seed rate). The various observations related to physiological parameters viz., crop growth rate, relative growth rate, leaf area, leaf area index, and chlorophyll content were recorded. The seed yield of soybean at harvest was also recorded. The obtained data were analyzed by the method of variance and the null hypothesis was tested by the ‘F’ test. Further, the critical difference was worked out to judge the difference between the two treatment means. The results revealed that the land configuration, seed rates, and variety significantly influenced the physiological parameters in soybean which reflected in the seed yield of soybean.