Improvement of Soil and Plant Health through Adoption of an Organic Package of Practice for Rice Cultivation in New Alluvial Soil of West Bengal

摘要

The objective of Organic farming is to achieve crop sustainability through restoration of soil dynamics, improvement of plant health through improvement of the soil - plant interactions, nourishment of the environmental resistance and reducing pest interferences. Lack of scientific guidelines and comprehensive organic package of practice (POP) has rendered the objective unachievable. The present study was initiated at Howrah Krishi Vigyan Kendra in 2015 and 2016 to evaluate the potential of Inhana Rational Farming (IRF) Technology, an organic POP, towards increasing crop productivity and restoration of soil quality under rice cultivation under different farming model viz . organic, integrated, non-pesticidal crop management as well as KVK.s recommendation with reduced fertilizer dosage. Treatments with organic plant management practices (IRF technology) showed 5% higher crop productivity (4774 kg/ha) in comparison to conventional farmers’ practice (4537 kg/ha) for Swarna sub-1 rice variety. Where as in case of scented rice varieties like Gobindobhog , the organic practice showed highest crop performance (3194 kg/ha) among all the treatments, and achieved 17% higher yield than that obtained under conventional farmers’ practice (2726 kg/ha).? Also the non-pesticidal crop management, a new concept of synthetic pesticide free crop cultivation under IRF Technology showed higher crop performance (4991 kg/ha and 2978 kg/ha in Swarna sub-1 and Gobindobhog rice varieties respectively) than conventional farmers practice. Organic plant management under IRF aimed at activation of plant physiology was found to have a positive impact towards agronomic development and yield performance as compared to conventional practice. Assessment of soil quality parameters indicated increasing trend of soil quality especially in terms of soil biological parameters for plots receiving Novcom compost.