Quality of wheat (Triticum aestivum) as influenced by sowing dates and nitrogen scheduling

Abstract

An experiment was conducted during winter (rabi) season of 2003–05 to find out the effect of sowing time and nitrogen scheduling on the quality of wheat at Hisar, on sandy loam soil conditions. The results revealed that delayed sowing from 15 November to 5 December and 25 December decreased the grain yield significantly during both the years, whereas protein content increased significantly with delayed sowing. The different fractions of protein in wheat grain, viz albumin, globulin and glutenin and sedimentation value were not affected significantly, however, prolamin content, wet gluten and zeleny content in grain increased significantly with delayed sowings. The hectoliter weight decreased significantly with delayed sowing. The quality of grain and fractions improved in term of increased protein content by 0.6% by the application of nitrogen over the control. Wet gluten content and zeleny increased significantly over control. There was a reduction of 15.7 kg/ha/day in grain yield when sown on 5 December than 15 November and 23.0 kg/ha/day when sown on 25 December than 15 November and 30.4 kg/ha/day from 5 December to 25 December sown wheat. There was 57.7% increase in grain yield in foliar application at anthesis over the control. The foliar application of nitrogen increased the grain yield up to 3% than soil application, but the difference in grain yield was nonsignificant.