Effect of sowing dates on development of downey mildew disease in Indian mustard (Brassica junceaL.)

Downy mildew caused by Peronospora brassicae (Pers. ex Fr.) Fr. is one of the most common and destructive disease of Indian mustard [Brassica juncea (L.) Czern \u0026 Coss.] The experiments were conducted under field condition to develop effective management strategies for this disease through evaluation of date of sowing. Therefore, series of experiments were conducted during 2015-2016 at Genetics and Plant Breeding Farm, N. D. University of Agriculture and Technology, Kumarganj, Ayodhya (U.P.) to find out the appropriate sowing time to minimize the Downeymildewdisease severity and maximum yield. The sowing dates was01 October (D1), 10 October (D2), 20 October (D3), 30 October (D4), 10 November (D5), 20 November (D6), 30 November (D7) and 10 December (D8), 2015 after 10 days intervals.Over all on the basis of pooled data of different time intervals the maximum incidence (20.92%) was also recorded in the plots sown on 10th November, 2015. In contrastingly, it was minimum (0.73) in plots sown on 1st October, 2015and highest AUDPCwasrecordedin 10th November, 2015 sown crops and minimum is recorded as a1st October, 2015 (15). On the basis of experimentation it was concluded that early sown crops (Ist Fortnight of October) escaped the disease as compared to its delayed sowings (2nd Fortnight of October, 1st and 2nd Fortnight of November). Management of the Downeymildew diseasethrough manipulation of date of sowing is a cheapest and best method of disease control .