Response of Liquid Nano Urea, Clipping Practices and Seed hardening on Sesame (Sesamum indicum L.) Productivity at Karaikal Region, India

A field experiment was conducted in Agronomy Farms at the Department of Agronomy, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru College of Agriculture and Research Institute (PAJANCOA & RI), Karaikal during the summer season of 2023, to identify an effective seed hardening technique, with and without clipping practice and foliar application in TMV-7 variety of sesame for Karaikal region. The experiment was laid out under Factorial concept of Randomized Block Design (FRBD) with twelve treatments replicated thrice. The treatments consisted of three factors viz., Seed hardening, clipping practice and foliar application. The treatments were of the combination of three factors viz., (i) Seed hardening [No hardening (H0), hardening with plain water (H₁) and hardening with LNU (1000 ml ha-1 of seeds) (H2)], (ii) Clipping practice [without clipping (C0) and with clipping (C1)] and (iii) foliar spray (0.1%) [without foliar spray (F0) and with foliar spray hardening (F1)]. Hardening the seeds with liquid nano urea recorded higher growth and yield parameters. Similarly, the other two factors, clipping practice and foliar application of LNU recorded higher growth and yield attributes. Among clipping practices, the treatment LNU with clipping was superior (752.2 kg ha-1) in comparison to the treatment of LNU without clipping practice in terms of seed yield (544.5 kg ha-1). In the case of foliar application, crops with foliar spray recorded higher seed yield (702.5 kg ha-1) than without foliar spray, Whereas, seed hardening failed to bring up a significant difference for seed yield kg ha-1.