Date of Planting, Spacing and Integrated Nutrient Management Practices Improves Soil Microbial Populations and Soil Fertility Status Under Rice -Arhar Cropping System in Acidic Soils of Eastern India

ABSTRACT

Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is a nutrient-exhausting crop, sustainable productivity of rice based cropping system can be achieved through appropriate nutrient management and crop diversification through incorporation of pulse into this system. Considering the above facts, a field experiment on rice-arhar system was conducted for two consecutive years (2018 and 2019) during kharif seasons at the Agronomy research Farm of Odisha University of Agriculture and Technology, Bhubaneswar having sub-humid climate with two date of planting, three nutrient management and three row spacing. Soil physico-chemical properties like N, soil organic carbon (SOC) was found higher with earlier planting, soil-test-based fertilizer Recommendation (STBFR) + Farmyard Manure (FYM) in rice and 30 cm row spacing in arhar. The system nutrient uptake of 219.76 kg N ha⁻¹, 38.25 kg P ha⁻¹ and 197.29 kg K ha⁻¹ and microbial activities in terms of dehydrogenase activity (DHA) (241.9 mg TPF g⁻¹ soil 24 hr⁻¹), alkaline phosphatase activity (APA) (376.7 mg p-nitrophenol kg⁻¹ soil 1 h⁻¹), microbial biomass Carbon (MBC) (260.3 μg g⁻¹ of dry soil), microbial biomass nitrogen (MBN) (93.7 μg N g⁻¹ soil) was registered with earlier planting, STBFR + FYM in rice and 30 cm row spacing in arhar. Higher positive N and K balance over initial (actual balance) in rice-arhar cropping system was observed in the treatment fertilized with both organic and inorganic sources of nutrients.

KEYWORDS:

• Date of planting
• FYM
• green manuring
• soil
• spacing
• STBFR

Acknowledgments

Authors sincerely thank the Laboratory and department staff of the Department of agronomy, OUAT, Bhubaneswar for smooth conduct of laboratory and experimental work. Thanks Dr. S.N. Jena, Ex. Prof. and Head of OUAT, Bhubaneswar for initial review of manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).