Integrated Nutrient Management and Postharvest of Crops

Abstract

Rational pursuit of sustainability is only possible if society could agree upon what sustainability is, or more exactly, if mankind knows what we want to sustain. Policy reforms are a requirement for achieving sustainability. Much can be achieved by promoting polices that help better resource allocation and at the same preserve the natural ecosystem. In addition, conservation incentives are needed through functioning of the marketplace, along with an assessment of alternative mechanisms to control externalities. Soils represent dynamic ecosystems, making it appropriate to think about them in terms such as health, vitality and biological productivity. Soils are the resources that provide humans with more than 90 % of all the food we eat. Our challenge is to manage soils in a sustainable fashion so that they will provide for human needs in the future. However, the measurement of soil processes and of the soil properties linked to these also depend on the use and location of the soil. When evaluating soil quality, it is therefore common to explore a range of soil physical, chemical, and biological properties. Integrated Nutrient Management (INM) holds out great promise for meeting the growing nutrient demands of intensive agriculture and maintaining crop productivity at higher levels with an overall improvement in the quality of the resource base. INM involves proper combination of chemical fertilizers, organic manure, crop residues,