Sustainability under combined application of mineral and organic fertilizers in a rainfed soybean-wheat system of the Indian Himalayas
2008
Bhattacharyya, R. | Kundu, S. | Prakash, V. | Gupta, H.S.
Soybean (Glycine max L.)-wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) rotation is one of the profitable cropping systems under rainfed conditions in the sub-temperate agro-ecosystem of the Indian Himalayas. We measured the long-term sustainability of the system for farmyard manuring and mineral fertilizer input practices utilizing the trends in grain yield, partial factor productivity (PFP), agronomic efficiency (AE), benefit:cost ratio (B:C ratio), soil organic C (SOC), total N content, available nutrient (P and K) status, microbial biomass C, dehydrogenase activity, selected soil physical properties (bulk density, soil water retention and infiltration rate) and sustainable yield index (SYI). The long-term (30 years) soybean-wheat experiment was conducted at Hawalbagh, Almora, India in a sandy loam soil (Typic haplaquept) under sub-temperate climatic conditions. Every year, the nutrients were applied to the soybean crop and wheat was grown without addition of any external sources of nutrients (residual wheat). The unfertilized plot supported a 0.56 Mg soybean yield ha-1 and a 0.71 Mg wheat yield ha-1 (mean yield of 30 years). Soybean responded to inorganic NPK application and the yield increased to 0.87 Mg ha-1 with NPK. Maximum yields of soybean (2.84 Mg ha-1) and subsequent wheat (1.88 Mg ha-1) were obtained in the plots under NPK + farmyard manure (FYM) treatment.
Show more [+] Less [-]AGROVOC Keywords
Bibliographic information
This bibliographic record has been provided by National Agricultural Library