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Research Article

Legume Research, volume 44 issue 10 (october 2021) : 1203-1210

Assessing the Yield Response of Lentil (Lens culinaris Medikus) as Influenced by Different Sowing Dates and Land Situations in Indian Sundarbans

Sukamal Sarkar1, Argha Ghosh2,*, Koushik Brahmachari1, Krishnendu Ray3, Manoj Kumar Nanda1
1Department of Agronomy, Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya, Mohanpur-741 252, Nadia, West Bengal, India.
2Department of Agricultural Meteorology and Physics, Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya, Mohanpur-741 252, Nadia, West Bengal, India.
3Sasya Shyamala Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda Educational and Research Institute, Arapanch-700 150, Sonarpur, West Bengal, India.

  • Submitted18-09-2019|

  • Accepted27-12-2019|

  • First Online 15-04-2020|

  • doi 10.18805/LR-4237

Cite article:- Sarkar Sukamal, Ghosh Argha, Brahmachari Koushik, Ray Krishnendu, Nanda Kumar Manoj (2021). Assessing the Yield Response of Lentil (Lens culinaris Medikus) as Influenced by Different Sowing Dates and Land Situations in Indian Sundarbans . Legume Research. 44(10): 1203-1210. doi: 10.18805/LR-4237.

ABSTRACT

In order to assess the effect of agroclimatic factors on the development and production of lentil (cv. WBL 77) grown under different sowing dates and land situations, an experiment was conducted during the winter seasons of 2016-17 and 2017-18 in the coastal saline zones of West Bengal. Lentil was sown on six different dates starting from 23rd November to 25th December in both the seasons in two different land situations viz. medium upland and medium lowland. It was observed that both early sown lentil resulted in higher grain (Year 1 = 733.41 kg ha-1, Year 2 = 881 kg ha-1,) and stover yield (Year 1 = 2035.6 kg ha-1, Year 2 = 2422 kg ha-1) and took more time to mature when cultivated in the medium lowland situation irrespective of sowing dates. Crop developmental rate was positively associated with the air temperature and accumulated agrometeorological indices. Air temperature and total solar radiation during 100% emergence to 100% flowering stage were negatively associated with the grain yield, while rainfall and relative humidity were positively correlated with the grain yield of lentil. Grain and stover yield could be predicted with 91.0% and 85.0% predictability, respectively. Grain yield could be predicted with 88% predictability at the end of 100% flowering phase. 

INTRODUCTION

India is endowed with panorama of agro-climates and soil types to support diversified agriculture vis-à-vis multidisciplinary farming system. The country has an 8,129 km long coastal line (Brahmachari et al., 2017). Agriculture is the prime occupation and life-line of the peoples of the coastal saline zone (CSZ) of West Bengal and will continue to be the same in the foreseeable future. Due to gradual increase in salt accumulation in soil from winter to summer days, the cultivation of winter crops becomes limited to a meagre area with a resultant low cropping intensity of the zone (Banerjee et al., 2017). The land topography of CSZ often classified as homestead upland medium-up, medium-low and lowlands, amongst them later, two are frequently inundated by monsoon floods associated with poor drainage. The rainfed rice-based mono-cropping pattern predominantly is followed in this region (Sarangi et al., 2019). Excepting the extremely saline coastal line, the climatic condition CSZ mostly favours intensive cropping and it is possible to take two crops in a year under rainfed condition (Brahmachari et al., 2017).
       
Crop growth and yield are largely influenced by microclimate environment in the crop. Among the various microclimatic factors, temperatures, solar radiation and humidity play a pivotal role in regulating the crop production (Kinga and Kaur, 2012). Time of sowing is one of the important factor that regulates the accumulation of growing degree days (GDD) and heat use efficiency (HUE) which ultimately influenced the economic yield of crops (Pradhan et al., 2018). It was also reported that delay in sowing after the optimum sowing window may have a negative impact on crop yield (Ghosh and Khan, 2019). Optimization of the sowing window under CSZ also helps to utilize residual soil moisture and to avoid mid-season salinity stress in crops.
       
Lentil (Lens culinaris Medikus) is the most important leguminous pulse crop of winter seasons (Pratap et al., 2016). It occupies about 1.80 million ha area with a production of 1.10 million tonnes (Mandi et al., 2017). Due to its quick growing habit and high-yielding ability, it may be suitably fitted as a catch crop in the rice-based cropping systems with the dual advantage of crop diversification for sustainable production as well as area expansion of pulses in post-rice fallow areas (Mandi et al., 2017). However, in CSZ, the sowing of lentil often gets delayed due to weather variability, unavailability of lands which ultimately lowers the yield (Bandyopadhyay et al., 2016). Eventually late sown lentil faces terminal heat and moisture stress resulting in poor pod filling (Ali et al., 2012). Modern crop simulation models often used to predict the influence of microclimate on crops, these models required large and specialized data set (Kinga and Kaur, 2012). Therefore, agroclimatic simplified models may be quite useful to meet these objectives. Keeping these facts in mind, the present experiments were conducted to study the effect of various agroclimatic parameters on yield and to generate crop weather relationships for lentil grown in the coastal saline zone of West Bengal, India. 

MATERIALS AND METHODS


Field experiments were conducted in 2016-17 and 2017-18 in the research field of Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya located at Gosaba, South 24 Pgs, West Bengal (21.92° N latitude and 88.80° E longitude with an elevation of 4 m above mean sea level) to study the effect of date of sowing and land situation on crop-weather relationship on lentil. Meteorological data during the crop growth period was recorded at Automatic weather station (EM50 Data Collection System, Decagon Inc., Germany) located 2 m away from the experimental field. The soil was sandy clay in texture, acidic in reaction (pH 5.44) with electrical conductivity 1.13 dS m-1 (soil: water:: 1:5), medium in organic carbon (0.51%) and available K (137 kg ha-1), low in available P (15.9 kg ha-1) and high in available N (530 kg ha-1).
       
The experiment was conducted in strip plot design having two factors namely, Horizontal factor: six dates of sowing (D-1 to D-6) of lentil (cv. WBL 77) at an interval of one week (23rd November to 25th December), Vertical factor: Two land situations (Medium-upland and Medium-lowland, having distinct land topography). The experiment was conducted with four replications with a gross plot size of 5 m × 4 m and net plot size of 4.5 m × 3.5 m. The experimental field was used for rice cultivation in rainy season. After harvesting of rice, the field was used for the present experiment for utilization of the residual soil moisture and selection of proper sowing time. The recommended dose of fertilizer, i.e. 20:40:20:: N:P2O5:K2O kg ha-1 was applied uniformly in all experimental plots at the time of final land preparation (Department of Agriculture, GoWB, 2012). All other essential agronomic practices were followed as per the best management practices (Sarangi et al., 2014).
       
Crop developmental rates of lentil during different growth stages were calculated by employing the formula used by Ghosh et al., (2018).
 
Crop developmental rates (CDR) of a growth stage =  
 
To study the effect of weather on crops, entire growing season of lentil was divided into four phenophases namely sowing to 100% emergence phase (P-1), 100% emergence to 100% flowering phase (P-2), 100% flowering to physiological maturity (P-3) and physiological maturity to harvest (P-4).
       
Three accumulated agrometeorological indices viz., growing degree day (GDD) occurring at different phases were computed as per Rachaputi et al., (2015). 

 
Where,
Tm = Daily mean temperature in °C i.e.   where, Tmax and Tmin are maximum and minimum air temperatures, respectively and Tb = Base temperature.
       
GDD or heat units were computed considering 5°C being the base temperature for development of lentil (Pratap et al., 2016). Day length for the latitude of the experimental field where Weather Station was situated was calculated following the table values of possible sunshine hours given by Doorenbos and Pruitt (1977).
       
Photothermal units (PTU) were calculated using the formulae adopted by Kinga and Kaur (2012).
 
                 Photothermal units (PTU)= (Tm-Tb) × DL
Where,
DL is Day length (Possible sunshine hours: from dawn to twilight)
       
Heat use efficiency (HUE) was obtained by using the following formula as suggested by Kinga and Kaur (2012).
 
Heat use efficiency (kg ha-1 °C day-1) =  Yield (kg ha-1) ÷ Accumulated heat unit (°C day)
 
       
Photothermal use efficiencies (PTUE) was calculated by following formulae adopted by Kinga and Kaur (2012).
 
Photothermal use efficiency (kg ha-1 °C hour-1) = Yield (kg ha-1) ÷ Accumulated phothermal unit (°C hour)
 
The collected data were analyzed statistically by the analysis of variance (ANOVA) technique using the STAR Software version 2.0.1 (IRRI, 2014). Simple correlation study was computed out between grain and stover yield of lentil and the growth phase wise agrometeorological factors. Stepwise regression technique was employed to develop weather-based yield prediction models.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Effect of sowing dates and land situations on crop developmental rates
 
Crop developmental rates (CDR) during different growth phases of lentil were greatly influenced by the variation in sowing dates (Table 1). In both experimental seasons, effect of sowing dates on CDR was found to be almost similar in both medium upland and medium lowland situations. Results revealed that CDR of growth phases increased with delay in sowing dates. It was also observed that lentil took slightly more time to mature when grown in the medium lowland situation irrespective of sowing dates. Increase in the rate of crop development was demonstrated earlier by Ghosh et al., (2018) for grass pea crop where increased temperature accelerated the developmental rate of the crop.
 

Table 1: Crop developmental rates (day-1) of different growth phases of lentil as affected by date of sowing of and land situations.


 
Effect of date of sowing on agrometeorological parameters prevailing during different growth stages of lentil
 
Due to variation in the sowing dates of lentil, the crops were subjected to varied weather conditions. The amount of rainfall, solar radiation, heat units and photothermal units accumulated during different growth stages of the crop was varied (Fig 1) as affected by the sowing dates. Irrespective of land situations, almost similar trends were found in both the experimental seasons.
 

Fig 1: Accumulated weather parameters prevailing during entire crop growing period of lentil: (a) Total solar radiation (MJ m-2), (b) Rainfall (mm), (c) Accumulated GDD (day oC) and (d) Accumulated PTU (oC hour).


 
Effect of date of sowing and land situation on yield of lentil
 
Data presented in Table 2 revealed that, in both experimental years, the date of sowing significantly influenced the grain yield of lentil. Higher grain and stover yield of lentil was obtained from 1st (Year 1: GY = 733.41 kg ha-1, SY = 2035.6 kg ha-1; Year 2: GY = 881 kg ha-1, SY = 2422 kg ha-1) to 2nd (Year 1: GY = 685.94 kg ha-1, SY = 2009.2 kg ha-1; Year 2: GY = 838.2 kg ha-1, SY = 314.9 kg ha-1) sowing, irrespective of land situations. On other hand, crop sown on medium-lowland situation recorded slightly higher yield than that sown on medium-upland condition. Interaction effect of date of sowing and land situation had non-significant impact on yield of lentil. The performance of lentil was significantly better in Year 2 as compared to Year 1. It may be due to the congenial weather, improvement of soil fertility status or less salt accumulation in root zone. But in both the years, crop sown on early dates performed better than late sown crops.
 

Table 2: Grain and stover of lentil as influenced by land situation and date of sowing.


 
Optimum sowing time is one of the most significant factors which determines the crop yield. Previous researches have reported that delay in sowing of crops beyond the optimum sowing window can have negative effect on crop yield (Singh et al., 2016). In the present experiment, early sown lentil performed better than latter sown crops. This may be due to higher remobilization of resources in the early sown crop which probably was linked to the higher dry matter of the crop at anthesis, thus representing the potential source for dry matter remobilization (Pal et al., 2017). Agro-metrological factors like air temperature, solar radiation and atmospheric humidity also plays significant role to determine the yield (Huang et al., 2019). Early sown rabi crops also recorded significant yield advantages for the by better utilization of residual soil moisture as well as post-monsoon salinity stress (Malik et al., 2016).  
 
Effect of weather parameters on crop developmental rate
 
Crop developmental rate (CDR) during different phenophases of lentil recorded significant relationship with weather parameters (Table 3). Amongst the different weather parameters, significant and positive correlations were observed between CDR of sowing to 100% emergence phase (P-1) and Tmax (0.85**), Tmin (0.63*) under medium upland situation and with Tmin (0.69*) under medium lowland situation. Similarly, highly significant and positive correlations were found between CDR of 100% flowering to physiological maturity (P-3) and Tmax (0.58*, 0.65*), Tmin (0.80**, 0.79**) under medium upland and medium lowland situation respectively. In both land situations, TSR recorded highly significant and negative relationship with CDR of all developmental phases except at P-3 under medium upland situation. Irrespective of land situations, AGDD also recorded significant and negative relationship with CDR of all developmental stages except P-2 and P-3 under medium upland condition. Alike AGDD, APTU recorded significant and negative relationship with developmental rates of different developmental phases except P-2 and P-3 under medium upland condition and P-2 under medium lowland condition.
 

Table 3: Correlation coefficients between weather parameters and crop developmental rates of lentil grown in different land situations (based on data of Year 1 and Year 2).


 
Effect of weather parameters on seed and stover yield of lentil
 
In order to determine the effect of weather parameters on grain and stover yield of lentil, correlation study was carried out and the values of correlation coefficient (r) were presented in Table 4. Experimental findings revealed that the maximum and minimum temperature, total solar radiation, accumulated growing degree days and accumulated photothermal units during 100% emergence to 100% flowering stage were negatively associated with the seed and stover yield of lentil in both medium upland (GY:Tmax = -0.96**, GY:Tmin = -0.86**, GY:TSR = -0.59*, GY:AGDD = -0.91**, GY:APTU = -0.90**; SY:Tmax = -0.89**, SY:Tmin = -0.80**, SY:AGDD = -0.78**, SY:APTU = -0.76**) and medium lowland (GY:Tmax = -0.95**, GY:Tmin = -0.85**, GY:AGDD = -0.87**, GY:APTU = -0.86**; SY:Tmax = -0.96**, SY:Tmin = -0.85**, SY:TSR = -0.59*, SY:AGDD = -0.87**, SY:APTU = -0.87**) situations. Relative humidity and total rainfall during 100% emergence to 100% flowering stage had negative impact on grain yield of lentil as demonstrated by negative values of r. Minimum air temperatures prevailing during the physiological maturity to harvest also adversely affected grain and stover yield for medium low land (GY:Tmin = -0.74**, SY:Tmin = -0.72**) situations. Irrespective of land situations, higher relative humidity at physical maturity (P-4) also has adverse impact on yield of crop. Grain yield of lentil decreased as the sowing delayed which may be attributed due to the adverse effect of temperature and relative humidity during the reproductive stage of the crop. The crops sown on later date experienced higher temperature during flowering phase which caused floral abortion and produced lesser numbers of pods. Increased temperature had negative effect on pod filling (Ghosh, 2018) which ultimately reduced grain yield.
 

Table 4: Correlation coefficients between weather parameters and grain and stover yield of lentil grown in different land situations (based on data of Year 1 and Year 2).



 Effect of sowing date and land situation on energy use efficiencies
 
Energy use efficiencies of the crops were determined in terms of radiation use efficiency (g MJ-1), heat use efficiency (kg day-1 °C-1) and photothermal use efficiency (kg °C-1 hour-1). In both the years, all the energy use efficiencies showed declining trend as sowing delayed (Table 5) for both land situations. Crop grown in medium lowland situation was more efficient to utilize radiation, heat units and photothermal units as demonstrated by the higher values of use efficiencies.
 

Table 5: Effect of sowing date and land situation on energy use efficiencies of lentil.


 
Yield prediction of lentil
 
Stepwise linear regression models were used to predict grain and stover yield of lentil using meteorological factors as explanatory variables. It was found that grain and stover yield of lentil could be predicted by three and two models respectively (Table 6). Model 1 (R2 = 0.85**) involved relative humidity during 100% flowering to maturity phase and predicted grain yield with 85% predictability. Model 2 added accumulated PTU during maturity to harvest phase to model 1 and resulted in a predictability of 89.0%. Likewise, model 3 (R2 = 0.91**) included minimum air temperature during sowing to 100% emergence in model 2 resulting increased predictability. It was evident that relative humidity and accumulated PTU were the main driving factors for grain production of lentil.
 

Table 6: Regression equations involving agroclimatic parameters to predict grain yield and Stover yield of lentil (based on data of year 1 and year 2).


 
On the other hand, two numbers models were estimated in order to forecast the stover yield of lentil (Table 6). In model 1, maximum air temperature during 100% emergence to 100% flowering phase was selected by the regression technique to predict stover yield (R2 = 0.78**). Inclusion of relative humidity during 100% emergence to 100% flowering phase in the model 1 demonstrated 85.0% of the total variability in stover yield of lentil through linear regression equation (model 2). In harmony to the present findings, Ghosh and Khan (2019) also agreed that agrometeorological factors could be effectively utilized to predict grain yield of winter pulses like grass pea.
 
Pre-harvest forecasting of yield
 
In order to forecast the yield of lentil, step wise regression analysis was employed involving the agrometeorological factors prevailing during sowing to 100% flowering (Table 7). To predicting grain yield of lentil, model 1 only utilized the relative humidity during 100% emergence to 100% flowering phase (R2 = 0.85**). On the other hand, model 2 were obtained pre harvest forecasting of grain yield of lentil by using total solar radiation during 100 % emergence to 100% flowering phase in addition to relative humidity during 100% emergence to 100% flowering phase with higher predictability (88%) than model 1.
 

Table 7: Regression equations involving agroclimatic parameters for pre-harvest forecasting of grain yield of lentil (based on data of Year 1 and Year 2).

CONCLUSION

From the two year study it was evident that lentil took more time to mature when cultivated in the medium lowland situation irrespective of sowing dates. It was also observed that lentil yield was significantly reduced if the sowing was delayed. Agrometeorological parameters prevailing during crop growing season affected developmental rate of growth phases and yield. Relative humidity and solar radiation during emergence of seed to flowering phase were proved to be the most crucial factors for determining yield of lentil.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The study was funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research through the project ‘Cropping system intensification in the salt-affected coastal zones of Bangladesh and West Bengal India’ (LWR/2014/073).

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