Benefits from Micro and Secondary Nutrients: Impacts on Farm Income and Livelihoods in Rainfed Tribal and Backward Regions of Andhra Pradesh

In India, rainfed cropping is practiced on 80 Mha, in arid, semi-arid and sub-humid climatic zones; constituting about 57% of the net cultivated area. Even after development of all irrigation water resources, around 50% of the cultivated land will remain rainfed. Low and erratic rainfall, high temperature, degraded soils with low available water holding capacity and multinutrient deficiencies, low input use and low use efficiencies of applied nutrients, are important factors that contribute to low crop yields in these regions. Besides major nutrient deficiencies, deficiency of secondary and micro nutrients has also crept extensively in rainfed regions as supplementation of nutrients is seldom practiced. Additionally, adoption of intensive cereal based cropping systems, imbalanced use of fertilizers largely due to subsidized urea and DAp, micro and secondary nutrient deficiencies have become limiting factors for realizing potential yields. Among these, sulphur (S), boron (B) and zinc (Zn) are considered to be the most limiting nutrients in the rainfed areas, even in intensively cultivated tribal and backward regions. Judicious and balanced or integrated use of nutrients based on Site Specific Nutrient Management (SSNM), will play a major role in improving nutrient use efficiency, achieving food security and solve malnutrition problem in rainfed regions. The authors have done a commendable job of highlighting the extent of secondary and micronutrient deficiencies at state level covering clusters of rainfed backward and tribal regions, depicting deficiency symptoms of different crops, recommendations for different rainfed crops and cropping systems, yield and economic advantages of micro and secondary nutrient application as well as farmers' opinions. I trust that this bulletin prove to be informative and han dy from a practical point of view as well as be useful to researchers, planners and policy makers in ensuring agricultural sustainability under different rainfed cropping situations in backward areas. In fact, this publication paves the way to promote balanced use of fertilizer for higher yields, thus improving farmers' profit by breaking the barriers of stagnating/declining trend in the crop productivity in the rainfed regions of the country which were bypassed by the green revolution of the sixties and seventies