Enhancing Wheat Productivity in Pakistan through Nitrogen Management and NDVI Monitoring with Green Seeker

Abstract

Enhancing sustainability in modern farming systems, it is crucial to minimize environmental pollution from nitrogenous fertilizers by optimizing their application rates. The cost of production for wheat is increasing in Pakistan due to irrational use of nitrogen fertilizers by farming community which are costly and sometimes lead to high vegetative growth causing severe lodging thereby reducing yield. Optimum use of nitrogen (N) fertilizer is therefore empirical to improve the productivity of wheat at a reasonable cost. A field study for two-year was conducted at Ayub Agricultural Research Institute, Faisalabad to manage N fertilizers to enhance nitrogen use efficiency and improve financial return. A sensor-based nitrogen application using Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) was compared with farmer practice by using T-test. Results revealed that there was 29% reduction in the use of N and an increase of 12 % in wheat grain yield. Increase in yield with sensor base fertilization improved nitrogen uptake efficiency (39%) and nitrogen fertilizer productivity (59 %) compared to farmer-based N application. The sensor-based management system and the farmer's practices had nitrogen-use efficiencies of 49% and 44%, respectively. The highest net benefits (US$789), benefit cost ratio (1.92) and resource use efficiency (0.864) in sensor-based application of N revealed that the nitrogen management with the help of Green Seeker could be a viable option for enhancing NUE, financial returns and reduction of environmental contamination.