STUDIES ON DIFFERENT GENOTYPES AND TRANSPLANTING DATES ON BULB YIELD OF HIGH SOLID WHITE ONION (ALLIUM CEPA L.) UNDER SHORT-DAY CONDITIONS

Field experiments were carried out for two consecutive seasons (2009-2010 and 2010-2011) with a view to study the effect of transplanting dates and genotypes on yield of high solid white onion cultivars at Jain R&D farm, Jain hills, Jalgaon, Maharashtra State (MS). The effect of five transplanting dates (15 November, 1 and 15 December, 1 and 15 January) with three high solid white onion cultivars (‘JWO807’, ‘JWO605’ and ‘JWO16B’) were tried to determine the appropriate transplanting date and cultivar to get optimum yields and Total Soluble Solids (TSS) content. The results showed that early transplanting (15 November) of onion gave significantly high yield, however, TSS content was low in all the cultivars. The highest onion yield of 37.5 mt/ha was recorded in 2010-2011 when transplanted on 15 November while lowest yield of 14.3 mt/ha in 2009-2010 when transplanted on 15 January in ‘JWO807’. The transplanting date had significant effect on yield and other parameters studied. Among the transplanting dates and cultivars tried, ‘JWO807’ was found to be most promising, as it gave highest bulb yield (37.5 mt/ha) and least number of unmarketable bottle-shaped bulbs (0.6%) when transplanted on 15 November, highest average bulb weight (83.9 g) when transplanted on 1 December and highest Total Soluble Solids content (19%) when transplanted on 1 January. The transplanting on 15 November having comparatively less TSS content but gave significant yield differences in all the three cultivars than other transplanting dates, thus can be considered useful for raising high solid white onion bulb crop under short-day conditions. In the present study it was also observed that there is inverse correlation between yield and TSS content.