Effect of planting time and bulb size on growth, bulbs and seeds yield in onion var. Texas Early Grano

Abstract

An experiment was conducted to determine the effect of the bulb size and different planting dates on the growth and yield of bulbs and seeds in onion var Texas Grano in the Fallujah Amiriya (60 Km southwest of Baghdad) in the agricultural season 2016-2017. Three sizes of bulbs were used (15, 25and 20 g) and planted in three dates: 15 of December, 30 of December and 15 of January. The obtained results showed a significant effect of bulb size and planting date on the growth and yield of both bulbs and seeds. The planting date of 15 January with small bulb size (15 g) had the lowest rate of total vegetative characteristics, such as the number of tubular blades and the leaf area while the highest percentage of bulbs was 60.67%. The best results for the bulbs yield was 17.43 tons.ha -1, while the large bulb size (25 g) and the early date of 15 January were the best growth rates, number of tubular blades and leaf area in addition, the lowest percentage of flowering plants reached (21.87%) and lowest yield reached (6.50 tons.ha-1) while the highest flowering percentage was 78.10% and the lowest seed yield was 401.93 kg.ha-1.