Vegetos

Abstract

Field experiment was conducted in young coffee plantation at Central Coffee Research Institute, Karnataka to study the effect of different levels of fertilizers, sources of phosphorus with and without microbial inoculants on arabica coffee (Coffea arabica cv. Chandragiri). There were 12 treatment combinations replicated thrice with three levels of fertilizers, two sources of phosphorus and with and without microbial inoculants. The experiment results revealed that combined application of phosphorus (20:20:20 g/plant/year) with microbial inoculants recorded significantly highest growth parameters such as stem girth (27.53 mm/plant), bush spread (101.85 cm/plant), number of primaries (13.63), length of longest primary (72.29 cm/plant) and number of nodes on longest primary (16.42) at all the growth intervals compared to other levels of fertilizers. Among the sources of phosphorus, application of 50% rock phosphate along with 50% single super phosphate registered significantly highest growth parameters over application of only 100% rock phosphate and treatment inoculated with microbial inoculants recorded significantly higher growth, dry matter accumulation and nutrient uptake over un-inoculated treatments.