Performance of planting material on growth and yield of turmeric under guava orchard

The present investigation was conducted to find out the effect of different planting materials i.e. mother rhizome, primary finger, secondary finger and tertiary fingers on plant growth, yield and yield contributing characters along with economics of turmeric cv. Erode Selection-1. All the intercropping systems showed significant enhancement in the height of the tree varying from 1.25 to 3.40 over the sole tree. Among the different intercrops, better growth of the guava tree was observed where mother rhizome turmeric was grown as intercrop followed by primary, secondary and tertiary fingers treatments. Plant height and number of tillers per plant were enhanced in mother rhizome of turmeric (96.68 cm and 4.03, respectively) under shade of guava plant which results maximum survival percentage (98.45%) and its growth and performance was better than other planting materials. The highest number of fingers per plant (13.64), finger length (9.06), finger weight (36.14) and yield (389.47g/plant and 235.41q/ha) were recorded when turmeric were grown under juvenile guava tree which was significantly higher than all other planting materials. All the turmeric planting materials grown under shade of juvenile guava orchards were found most desirable in terms of vegetative growth, yield, gross return, net return and benefit cost ratio than sole crop.