PLANT CELL BIOTECHNOLOGY AND MOLECULAR BIOLOGY

Various organic substances have demonstrated effectiveness in sustaining soil and plant health, thereby enhancing growth, yield, and quality across different crops. The experiment was carried out to know the influence of biofertigation and crude edible oils application on yield attributing characters and yield of papaya (Carica Papaya L.) cv. Red Lady at Department of Fruit Science, Dr. YSRHU-College of Horticulture, Venkataramanannagudem, West Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh during 2021-22 and 2022-23. The experiment was laid out in a Factorial RBD with three replications consisted of two factors viz., biofertilizers at three levels (B₁: 5 ml each of NFB + PSB + KRB; B₂: 2.5 ml each of NFB + PSB + KRB; B₃: Without biofertilizer) and crude edible oil at five levels (C₁: Ground nut oil @0.5%; C₂: Castor oil @0.5%; C₃: Mustard oil @0.5%; C₄: Ground nut oil + Castor oil + Mustard oil @0.5%; C₅: No crude oil spray) with fifteen treatment combinations. Among the treatments studied, the results revealed that minimum days to first flowering, fruit initiation height, days to first harvest, maximum number of fruits per plant, fruit length, fruit girth, average fruit weight, fruit yield per plant and fruit yield hectare were registered in the plants applied with 5 ml each of biofertilizers NFB+ PSB + KRB along with ground nut oil + castor oil + mustard oil @0.5% (B₁C₄).