Nutrient Management in Different Farming Systems

摘要

Enhancing the nutrient use efficiency in crop-dominant farming systems has always been a big concern because of escalating cost of production of crops, especially on nutrient management. Imbalanced application of essential nutrients (in particular secondary and micro) is one of the reasons for low use efficiency of major nutrients. In this scenario, farming systems approach of nutrient management plays a critical role in reducing the market input cost besides providing sustainability of yield and income. Long-term multi-locational on-station and on-farm (farmers participatory) experiments conducted in the country reveal that application of micronutrients based on soil tests resulted in additional yield of 787, 438, 767, 260 and 416 kg ha"1 in rice- rice, rice- wheat, maize-wheat, pearl millet-wheat and rice-green gram systems, respectively. Mean economic response of major nutrients was found to be Rs. 8.9, 5.4 and 10.4 per rupee invested on N, P2O5 and K2O, respectively. Comparative performance of organic, inorganic and integrated nutrient production systems indicated seasonal influence on the nutrient management as all the kharif crops acquired higher sustainability (Sustainable yield index of 0.56 to 0.75) while the rabi crops, especially wheat and mustard, responded to higher sustainability under inorganic nutrient management. Further, crops such as potato and maize responded well under integrated production systems. Nutrient recycling in different scientifically designed integrated farming systems showed that on an average, 120 kg of N, 51 kg of P2O5 and 86 kg of K2O equivalent to 260 kg urea, 318 kg of single superphosphate (SSP) and 143 kg of muriate of potash (MOP) could be recycled from an area of 0.84 ha by adopting farming systems approach. Besides, macro nutrients, secondary and micro nutrients are also supplemented through recycling. Maximum recycling of nitrogen (359.4 kg N ha~(-1)), phosphorus (140 kg P2O5ha~(-1)) and potassium (398.6 kg K2O ha~(-1)) was observed in diversified farming systems having the components of crop production, horticulture, cow, fish, poultry, apiary, vermicompost, liquid manure preparation, and biogas.