Foliar spray of gamma ray degraded chitosan enhances the yield in wheat

A study on the effect of gamma ray degraded alginate and chitosan on the growth and yield of wheat was carried out. Initially, the elicitors (oligo-alginate and oligo-chitosan) stimulating the growth of wheat seedlings was identified in the laboratory studies. The elicitors had two attributes viz. size (based on dose of irradiation) and concentration of the solution. The two-way ANOVA showed that the dose of irradiation was more active in determining the bioactivity of the oligo compared to its concentration. Later, the elicitors which stimulated the seedling growth in the laboratory studies were tested in the field for their yield-enhancing effect in three different phases. In the first phase the treatment regimen of foliar spray increasing the yield or yield contributing was identified. The findings of first phase were later confirmed in the next two phases by treating the large population. The present study establishes that the foliar spray of 100 ppm of oligo-chitosan produced by 300 kGy of gamma ray at seedling, pre-flowering and grain-filling stage enhanced the yield by over 20 percent. The increase in yield was because of overall growth-stimulation of the plant, particularly the yield contributing characters such as fresh weight and length of spikelet and number of seeds per spikelet.