Performance of on farm testing (OFT) on application of zinc solubilizing bacteria (ZSB) on yield of rice

The experiment was conducted as an On Farm Testing during 2021-22 to 2023-24 at seven districts of Assam viz. Kamrup, Chirang, Bongaigaon, Karimganj, Morigaon, Golaghat and Lakhimpur. Three different treatments consisting of recommended doses of fertilizer (T₁), ZnSO₄ along with recommended doses of fertilizer (T₂) and ZSB along with recommended doses of fertilizer (T₃) were applied to Ranjit Sub-1, a recently released submergence tolerant variety in Assam. Treatments were arranged in factorial randomized block design and experiment was laid out with three replications in all the seven locations. The result revealed that the panicle length, filled grain, grains per panicle, 1000 seed weight and straw yield were the most important character contributing 79.4% (R² =0.794) of variation in grain yield in treatment 3. This is suggestive of the profound influence of these characters on yield. However none of the character combinations were found to be contributing more than 50% towards total grain yield variation in both the treatment 1 and 2. This indicated a comparatively lesser effects of the attributing characters in grain yield under these two treatments.