Effect of Crop Sequence, Compost and Plant Residues on Maize Yield Production, Sandy Soil Fertility and Reduce N-Mineral Fertilizer

Abstract

Continuous population growth gives rise to food problems in developing countries, which requires enhancement in quantity and quality of agricultural products as well as reduce fertilizer use. Therefore a cropping system study was carried out to establish good agricultural practices that decrease soil degradation and building up fertility of desert soils in Egypt. Accordingly, two rotation cycles were established to investigate the effect of inclusion legume crop (pea) in the rotation compared to heavy feeder crop (potato), on yield and its components of the subsequent crop (maize) as well as soil organic matter level and microbial activity. Addition of biofertilizers, organic fertilizer and different levels of inorganic N were also applied to study their integrated effect on improving nutrients availability for maize crop and the investigated sandy soil as well. Results have been shown that the co-application of organic and inorganic fertilizers in the pea/corn rotation improved yield responses and NPK accumulation in maize crop relative to potato/corn rotation. Since the quality of soil is strongly related to several interactions between chemical and biological factors, significant variation was detected in chemical properties (organic C, total N and available P and K) and biological properties (total microbial count, CO 2 evolution and dehydrogenases activity) for soil of organically treated plots compared to inorganically treated one under different sequence practices. It was concluded that balanced fertilization using both bio-and organic as well as chemical fertilizers under pea/maize sequence was reported to improve crop productivity and reduce inorganic N fertilizer requirement.