COB YIELD, NUTRITIONAL QUALITY AND HERBAGE PRODUCTIVITY OF BABY CORN AS INFLUENCED BY IRRIGATION AND INTEGRATED NUTRIENT FERTILIZATION

The optimization of plant nutrients and irrigation regimes hold potential to boost maize growth, cob yield, herbage biomass and revenue generation of maize. A field study was conducted to optimize irrigation and fertilization management for dual-purpose maize. The experiment was comprised four irrigation regimes viz. no irrigation (I-0), one irrigation 20 days after sowing (DAS) (I-1), two irrigations 20 and 40 DAS (I-2), and three irrigations 20, 40 and 60 DAS (I-3). The fertilization regimes included a treatment with recommended dose of fertilizers (RDF) (275-125-80-125-8 kg ha(-1) of nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium, gypsum and sulfur) (F-1), poultry manure (PM) (5 t ha(-1)) (F-2), 75% RDF + PM (2.5 t ha(-1)) (F-3), and 50% RDF + PM (5 t ha(-1)) (F-4). Combination of I-3 and F-3 outperformed other treatment combinations in terms of most of the yield attributes such as plant height (177.72 cm), cob length with (8.36 cm) and without husk (1.62 cm), and cob (without husk) yield (3.86 t ha(-1)). This treatment combination also produced maize with the highest protein content of leaves and cobs. However, the highest green herbage yield (29.99 t ha(-1)) was recorded with I(1)xF(1), which remained at par with I(1)xF(3). It took 20 additional days for crop switching from fodder harvest to attain baby corn maturity. The economic analysis revealed that I(3)xF(3) treatment combination generated the greatest economic revenue.