Flowers are related to Indian culture and heritage since from the ancient time. Flowers are the most beautiful creation of nature and have ability to attract anyone with delight, love and happiness.. Now a day floriculture industry is flourishing in production as well as trade all over the world. The word ‘Chrysanthemum’ is derived from the two Greek words ‘Chryos’ meaning gold and ‘Anthemon’ means ‘flower’ and completely ‘Golden Flower’. It is commonly known as ‘Gul-e-daudi’, ‘Autumn Queen’ and ‘Queen of the East’, belonging to family ‘Asteraceae’ and native of Asia and northern hemisphere especially Europe (Choudhary et al 2021). This flower crop is grown commercially all over the world due to wide diversity with respect to varied colours and hues of flowers, shape and sizes, growing pattern, maturity group and after harvest keeping quality characters. The cultivation of this crop has been reported first time in China and then reached to Japan and other parts of the world for cultivation. Traditionally, yellow and white coloured chrysanthemums are commonly grown for loose flowers and used for garland making and worship purpose. Chrysanthemum flowers can be classified into two categories on the basis of size viz., spray and standard type. The spray types are usually grown for loose flower purpose i.e., for social ceremonies, worship purpose, garland making whereas, standards are used for cut flower production, for indoor vase decoration, making bouquet and flower arrangements; pot plant for interior and exterior decoration as well as exhibition purpose. Apart from its exceptional beauty, wide range of colour, size, shape and keeping quality of flowers, easy to propagate have also made it much more popular among the consumers and commercial growers (Bisht et al 2010). These flowers have a constant demand during the days of festivals, functions and decoration throughout the year. Variety ‘Ratlam Selection’ is a mid to late season variety having spreading type growth habit. Flowers are cream in colour, decorative type and suitable for loose flower production.
The scientific information about the improved agro-technique for successful cultivation of chrysanthemums is not much available and farmers are not able to get more profit per unit area. As is well-known fact that nutrition and planting density are two major important parameters, which ultimately affect the flower yield. Growers facing problem in scientific cultivation of chrysanthemum due to lack of technical information and improved agro-technique like fertilizer dose (Satar et al 2016). Moreover, the soil health is degrading due to over use of fertilizers, insecticides, pesticides and other factor like repeated plantation of one crop in same field. Improper nutrient management leads to the nutrient imbalance in plants and results in lower down the flower yield (Senapati et al 2020). Nitrogen is considered to be the most critical major element for vegetative growth and flower yield in chrysanthemum (Rajan et al 2019). Nitrogen plays an important role within the plant and ensures the availability of energy to grow when and where the plant needs it to optimize yield. It has been established that there is positive correlation between fertilizer usages and flower productivity. In the current scenario, lower productivity and inferior quality of chrysanthemum is due to inefficient use of fertilizers. Chrysanthemum is a shallow rooted crop and nutrient management as well as maintenance of proper moisture level is essential to compensate the evapo-transpiration losses, economic losses and other losses like leaching of salts. Thus, such type of losses can be reduced by adopting micro-irrigation system and the most successful system is drip irrigation that can be adopted in a large number of crops. Drip irrigation is the most efficient method among the all irrigation methods as water is going down directly to the root zone of a crop and this is one of the most economical methods suitable for the high value crops (Solaimalai et al 2005). It is generally known that fertilisation, which combines irrigation and fertiliser application, is the most efficient and practical way to maintain the ideal fertility level and water supply in accordance with the requirements of crop and soil.. Fertigation through drip irrigation supplies the fertilizers directly to the root zone level of plants and nutrient requirement can be met accurately (Neilsen et al 2004). Plant spacing is another important factor that has effective role in growth and development of plants. Plant population has pronounced effect on the vegetative growth and yield of chrysanthemum flowers at its optimum level, it provides for the scope for efficient utilization of solar nutrients to plants (Sahu et al 2021). Too closer spacing may results in greater competition among the plants for nutrients and other inputs and thus flower yield and quality parameters are affected. Too wider spacing results in less flower yield due to insufficient number of plants per unit area. Appropriate plant spacing and balanced fertilization are essential factors to get better plant spread and flower yield. The optimum plant spacing provides favourable conditions to the plant and gives higher flower yield (Ahirwar et al 2012). Consequently, the appropriate nitrogen level and plant spacing remained unclear.
The objectives of this study were: (1) to standardize the nitrogen requirement through drip irrigation for quality loose flower production in chrysanthemum. (2) to standardize the optimum plant spacing for quality loose flower production.