Abstract
The experiment was conducted in a farmer's field, Ban Fang district, Khon Kaen province in 1998-1999 to investigate the effect of seeding depth and soil mulching on the growth and yield of peanut grown after rice in the post-monsoon season of Northeastern Thailand. A split plot design was used with mulching and non-mulching as main-plots and seeding depths of 5, 10 and 15 cm as sub-plots. The results showed that deep seeding at 15 cm gave the highest leaf area index, highest total dry matter yield, highest pod number per plant, heaviest 100-seed weight and highest seed yield of peanut. This was attributed to the higher root length density at a deep soil layer provided by deep seeding. Peanut roots in the deep soil layer were capable of exploring a large soil volume for water which remained available throughout the crop cycle. Mulching application showed beneficial effects on growth and yield of peanut only with shallow seeding depth (5 cm).
