Nitrogen management by small farmers with the use of leaf color chart: a review

Abstract

Nitrogen (N) is one of the most crucial nutrients from production point of view regardless of the crop species. Being a key factor of crop production, N management is very essential. Large field variability of inherent soil N and difference in crop demand at different crop growth stages makes it difficult to manage . Besides, partial factor productivity of N is also declining day by day. Further, nitrogen requirement varies with crop, cultivar and climate. Therefore, optimum nitrogen application as per the crop demand becomes very important in crop production. Precise management of nitrogen reduces the loss of nitrogen via runoff, ammonia volatilization, and leaching along with improving nitrogen use efficiency. Real time nitrogen management is a need based application of nitrogen at right time and right amount for enhancing use efficiency by supplying the N at critical growth stages. Use of the leaf color chart (LCC) is one of the components of real time N management. The LCC is very simple, inexpensive, handy, and easy to use tool that compares leaf color with the color shades of the device. Farmers usually prefer dark color leaves, so they apply nitrogen irrespective of whether it is needed or not, an action that leads to contamination of surface and ground water as well as severe environmental hazards. With increasing fertilizer application soil health is also deteriorating which concern the sustainability of production. In that case, site specific nutrient management using leaf color chart is more viable option for small and marginal farmers.

Keywords:

• Fertilizer use efficiency
• leaf color chart
• nitrogen management
• soil health

Authors’ contributions

Conception: PS; Manuscript preparation: PS, HN, AB¹, AB³ and PB; Overall editing: PS and PB.

Competing interests

The authors are declaring that no competing interests exist.

Additional information

Funding

No funding was received for this work.