Evaluation of the Yield Losses associated with Iron Chlorosis in Groundnuts

Abstract

Iron is an essential micronutrient that plays an important role in DNA synthesis, photosynthesis and respiration for almost all living things. Elevated level of iron chlorosis was observed in two recently released early maturing groundnut varieties in Uganda. Up to date no study has been done in Uganda to determine the effect iron chlorosis on yield and growth parameters in groundnut. It is also not clear whether seeds from chlorotic plants result into chlorotic plants when planted. This study was carried out to determine the yield losses associated with iron chlorosis in NARONUT 1R and 2T under field conditions. A field experiment was carried out at National Semi Arid Resources Research Institute (NaSARRI) in Serere district in Eastern Uganda using Quasiexperimental design with 3 replicates per variety. The seeds obtained from first experiment were planted in Randomized complete block design with split plot treatment arrangement and replicated twice to determine the effect of chlorosis of the mother plant (seed source) on the resulting seedlings. The data were entered in MS Excel and analyzed using R and GenStat statistical software. In the study 1, the plant height, number of pods and pod weight per plant, 100 pods weight and shelling percentage significantly varied with visual chlorophyll rating (VCR) at harvest(p<0.05) whereas number of branches per plant was insignificant. Plants with 100% visual chlorosis scores performed significantly worse than the other levels (0, 25, 50, 75) of chlorosis scores for most traits measured. The performances of the plants with chlorosis visual scores of 0 and 25% were not significantly different for most the traits measured. In study 2, there was significant effect (p<0.05) of the level of chlorosis of the mother plant on the resulting plants for the incidences of iron deficient plants and the chlorophyll concentration with plants resulting from non-chlorotic (healthy) parents growing on average more vigorously compared to plants from chlorotic parents. The agronomic traits and the yield parameters did not significantly vary with the Parent Visual Chlorosis Scores