Influence of long-term nutrient management using Soil Test Crop Response approach on chemical and biological properties of soil under pearl millet-wheat cropping system
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Date
2020-08
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CCSHAU, Hisar
Abstract
The present study was carried out on the ongoing long-term experiment of STCR initiated
in 2009 at Research Farm, Department of Soil Science, CCSHAU, Hisar. The experiment was planned
in a randomized block design with four replication and seven treatments viz. T1-control, T2- FYM @
15 t ha-1, T3-RDN&P, T4-STCR with TY 3.0 t ha-1, T5-STCR with TY 3.5 t ha-1, T6- Integrated STCR
with TY 3.0 t ha-1 + FYM and T7- Integrated STCR with 3.5 t ha-1 + FYM yield targets. FYM @ 15 t
ha-1 was applied in rabi and kharif season in T2, T6 and T7 plots. Grain yield of pearl millet was
significantly affected by use of fertilizers in combination with FYM after ten cycles of pearl milletwheat
cropping system. Integrated treatment (T7) recorded the highest pearl millet grain and straw yield
(3532 and 8937 kg ha-1) followed by chemical fertilizers alone and lowest in control (1662 and 4132 kg
ha-1). The per cent deviations of grain yield in target yield (30 and 35 q ha-1) treatments with and
without FYM vary from -2.2 to +1.0. Application of FYM along with chemical fertilizers enhanced total
N, P and K uptake by 150.84, 192.56 and 150.75 % over the control. The long-term application of FYM
alone (T2) or integrated with fertilizers (T6 and T7) increased the available N from initial value (2009)
of 126 kg ha-1 to 168 kg ha-1 and available P from its initial value of 15 kg ha-1 to 27.10 kg ha-1. The soil
organic carbon, EC and micronutrients increased significantly with application of FYM alone or in
combination with chemical fertilizers. A decrease in soil pH was observed in the treatments where FYM
was applied. Amongst the different treatments, application of FYM alone or integrated with chemical
fertilizers showed higher microbial population, microbial biomass carbon and better enzymatic activities
in the soil. Soil microbial population followed a trend of natural population (predominance of bacteria
followed by actinomycetes and fungi). Integrated treatments (T6 & T7) showed highest bacterial
population (7.91 to 8.14 log10 no. cfu g-1 soil), fungal population (4.41 to 4.60 log10 no. cfu g-1 soil) and
actinomycetes population (5.85 to 6.03 log10 no. cfu g-1 soil). The application of FYM alone (T2) or
with fertilizers (T6 and T7) continuously for a period of 10 years had increased the soil MBC by 71 to
89 % as compared to control (T1). The long-term nutrient management using STCR approach showed
an increase of 16.30 to 93.79 % in dehydrogenase activity in soil in different treatments during the
entire crop growth of the pearl millet over the control (T1). Further, the microbial population, soil
microbial biomass carbon, enzymatic activities, soil organic carbon and available nutrients were found
to be more at early developmental stages of the crop and decreased at maturity.