Impact on Soil Health under Organic Nutrient Management in Transplanted Finger Millet (Eleusine coracana L.)

Abstract

Background: Finger millet being highly nutritious and easy to digest is one of the important crops grown in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh. Organic farming is gaining importance among the farmers with increasing yield, improving the quality of grains, and maintaining soil quality. Since the land availability is decreasing with increasing population. Finger millet has great scope under organic cultivation which could result in increased soil condition.
 Methodology: A field trial was performed at Agricultural College and Research Institute, Killikulam, Tuticorin, TNAU, Tamil Nadu from 2019 to 2020 during the rabi season to evaluate the performance of various organic sources concerning the soil properties changes. The study was conducted with an RBD design. Treatments include solid manures and liquid organics combination and their performance was evaluated. Finger millet - Co (Ra) 15 was used as a test variety. Soil health represents the soil properties generally including pH, EC, organic carbon content, N, P, and K levels, and also the soil microbial population.
 Results and Discussion: From the study, it was found that the application of 100 percent of nitrogen through poultry with foliar application of panchagavya at 30 and 45 DAT gave better yield and also enriched the soil fertility status.
 Conclusion: 100% N through Poultry manure and 3% panchagavya foliar spray at 30 & 45 DAT in transplanted finger millet gave increased soil health with higher soil properties. Thus, Organic farming proved to be an eco-friendly management option in finger millet for maintaining good soil health.

Potential for yield and soil fertility improvement with integration of organics in nutrient management for finger millet under rainfed Alfisols of Southern India

“…With the fertilizer and manure application, tillering was improved that might have resulted in greater interception of photosynthetically active radiation and enhanced crop photosynthesis. Such instances of improvement of yield attributes with application of organics and chemical fertilizers was also observed by other researchers ( 6 , 32 , 33 ).…”

Growth and yield attainment of foxtail millet (Setaria italica) under organic nutrient management practices

“…Significantly lower growth attributes were observed under water spray (S 1 ). This is in agreement with the findings of Govindappa et al (2009) [3] , Abdullahi et al (2014) [1] and Aravind et al (2020) [2] . At all the stages of crop growth except at 25 DAS, higher number of tillers m -2 were observed with the application of RDN through poultry manure (M 3 ) closely followed by application of RDN through vermicompost (M 2 ) and significantly lower number of tillers were noted with application of RDN through farmyard manure (M 1 ).…”

Effect of Nitrogen Management on Growth and Yield of Pearl Millet (Pennisetum glaucum L.)

“…Significantly higher crop growth rate was recorded with the application of Poultry manure may be due to higher nitrogen availability may have incorporatied in the soil through continuous slow release of nutrients supply resulted better crop growth rate. Similar results were reported by Ashokh et al [10]. Further, significantly higher crop growth rate was increased with the application inorganic fertilizer might be the increased availability of nutrients to plant initially through inorganic nitrogen source.…”