The groundnut is one of the important legume crops of tropical and semiarid tropical countries. Drought is the one of the major constraints to groundnut production as it is rainfed crop. Drought at flowering or pod formation can substantially reduce yield of ground but pre-flowering or vegetative stage is not detrimental and actually increases yield. Pot culture study was undertaken to study the effect of pre flowering drought on groundnut yield. Four groundnut genotypes were taken for this study namely CO 7, COGn 4, TMV 7 and TMV 13. Drought was imposed at three stages viz., Pre flowering drought (PFD) between 15- 30 DAS, flowering drought (FD) between 35-50 DAS and post flowering drought between 75-90 DAS (PoFD) by withholding water and control maintained with irrigation to field capacity for comparison. Among four genotypes, CO 7 performed better when compared to other genotypes under pre-flowering drought which produced more flowers (134), pegs (38), pods per plant (26) than control, flowering and post flowering drought. The results revealed that 21.18 per cent of increased pod yield was obtained compared to control under PFD in CO 7. Higher reproductive efficiency of groundnut is higher conversion rates of flowers to pegs, pegs to pods and of total pods to mature pods. .
Key Words: Groundnut, Pre flowering drought, Flowers, Pegs, Pod yield