Marigold is an important commercial annual flower belonging to family Asteraceae. Besides its aesthetic value; it has medicinal values as well and roots used as trap crop for nematodes. Flower production seems one of the viable options to explore with the great export potential and North Indian climatic conditions are favorable. In marigold, the flower yield and quality is greatly influenced by the planting time and flower crops are generally weak competitor and suffer from heavy infestation of many annual weeds, so use of mulch is a way to prevent weeds, along with application of plant growth regulator (GA3) which known to increase flower size and yield. Marigold flower production is relatively remunerative endeavour as compared to other traditional seasonal crops grown by farmers in HP. So keeping in view, a field experiment was conducted at experimental farm of SST, Dr YSP UHF, Nauni, Solan during 2015-17 to study the effect of different planting dates (1 st week of July, 3 rd week of July & 1st week of August, at 15 days interval), mulching (Control, Black plastic mulch, Silver-black plastic mulch & Crop residue mulch) and GA3 (0, 50, 100 & 150ppm) application for plant growth and flower quality of African marigold cv.„Pusa Narangi Gandha‟. 1 st week of July along with application of silver-black mulch and GA3 @150 ppm gave more plant height, number of flowers and size of flower also witnessed significant improvement under these factors. | Effect of planting dates, mulching and application of GA3 on growth and flower yield of marigold (Tagetes erecta L.) cv. ‘Pusa Narangi Gainda’
