Chickpea

• Soak seeds in water before sowing to enhance the germination percentage of the seeds.
  
• Smear seeds (1 kg) with a mixture of turmeric and sweet flag powder (50 gms turmeric powder and 15 gms sweet flag powder with 10 ml of water) and sow after 10 minutes. This will enhance the disease resistance of the crop.
  
• Smear seeds with mustard oil @ 100 ml / 40 kg of seeds before sowing to prevent wilt disease.
  
• Soak seeds of pigeon pea / chickpea in curd for 24 – 48 hours before sowing to control wilt disease.

Bengalgram

• Mix seeds with well fermented (sour) butter milk and shade dry before sowing.
• The acidic nature of the butter milk reduces the incidence of wilt and dry root rot diseases.

Blackgram and Greengram

Treat seeds with Trichoderma viride @ 4 gms/kg of seeds or Pseudomonas @ 10 gms/kg of seeds for the protection against disease causing microorganisms.

Seed Pelleting in Greengram

• Take the seeds in a plastic tray and add a small quantity of adhesive (10% maida solution) to the seeds. Shake this gently to enable the seeds to spread evenly on all parts of each of the seed. Add Arappu powder (Albizia amara) as filler material evenly over the seeds and continue shaking until the uniform coating is ensured.
• Remove the seed clumps manually and also the excess filler material by sieving. Shade dry this before sowing. This process helps to handle small and irregular shape seeds. It also enables precision sowing of seeds and physiological characters of seeds are strengthened.

Updated on : Nov 2014