Effect of Phosphorus Fertilizer and Temperature on Plant Growth and Fruit Parameters in Capsicum spp.

Abstract

Chili pepper (Capsicum spp.) is an important spice in the world food industry. Plant growth and fruit parameters vary with changing environmental factors and many experiments have been conducted to find out environmental effect for plant and fruit parameters in chili pepper except phosphorous (P) fertilizer and high temperature. Japanese agricultural soil rich in P fertilizer because of long term fertilizer application. High temperature is one of the major abiotic stress affecting plants, having adverse effects on growth and quality of the fruits of most plants. Therefore present experiment was conducted to find out the effect of excess phosphorus fertilizer and high temperature stress on plant growth and fruit parameters of chili. Three P fertilizer treatment (60, 300 and 600 g. m-2) and two temperature treatment (high temperature stress and control) were used for this experiment respectively in 2019 and 2020. According to the results, high temperature stress and excess P fertilizer condition negatively affected the plant growth and reduced the fruit size, length, weight and number of fruits than the control conditions. Therefore when growing chili pepper it is better to control temperature condition and supply only adequate P fertilizer quantity to get good growth and yield.