Abstract

A great deal of attention has been devoted in recent years, towards a more efficient utilisation of fertilizers in crop production. Various methods have been tried, starting from broadcasting, to placement of fertilizers right in the feeding zone of the root systems of crop plants, with the object of making available a larger quantity of nutrients to the growing plants. Amongst the various methods tried, coating the seeds with fertilizers was one; thus Gusev (1940) had claimed that by pretreating seeds with phosphates before sowing, either by moistening the seeds with an aqueous solution of phosphate fertilizer or by smearing the seeds with a mixture of starch paste and fertilizer, the plants were able to utilize as much as 70-80 percent of the phosphate supplied. This idea was taken a step further by Roach and Roberts (1949) in Great Britain, and subsequently other workers had also found there were practical possibilities in this method of seed pre-treatment with chemicals. In India, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research sponsored a research scheme in 1952 to investigate the scope and possibilities of this method, in improving the growth and yields of important crops. This scheme was worked in the Plant Physiology section of the Agricultural Research Institute at Coimbatore, and a number of crop plants was studied; the results obtained in rice (paddy) plants are presented in this paper.

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