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EFFECT OF ROW SPACING ON EARLINESS AND YIELD IN COTTON

M. FARRUKH SALEEM^,1*, SHAKEEL A. ANJUM¹, AMIR SHAKEEL², M. YASIN ASHRAF³ AND HAROON Z. KHAN¹

Abstract: To determine the effect of row spacing on earliness in cotton, 3 cultivars viz., NIAB-111, CIM-496 and FH-901 were grown with three row spacings of 60, 75 and 90 cm following a 3 x 3 factorial arrangement. Cultivars as well as row spacing significantly affected almost all the characters related to earliness. Among the cultivars, NIAB-111 took minimum days for squaring, appearance of first flower, first boll splition and for boll maturation and recorded the lowest node to the first fruiting branch. Among row spacings, 60 cm apart rows took minimum days for the characters related to earliness. Earliness index was highest (50.9 %) with 60 cm row spacing, production rate index was highest (55.9 g/day) with 90 cm row spacing and seed cotton yield was highest (2603 kg ha^-1) with 75 cm row spacing. So, earliness in cotton can be achieved by growing a short duration cultivar and by decreasing the row spacing to a certain limit.

¹Department of Agronomy, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan.

²Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad. Pakistan

³Nuclear Institute for Agriculture and Biology, Faisalabad, Pakistan.

^*Corresponding author E-mail: mfsuaf@yahoo.com