Integrated and site-specific fertilizer application role in rice-wheat cropping system

Abstract

Continuous use of mineral fertilizers can worsen soil quality, leading to declining productivity and soil pollution. An effective integrated fertilizer strategy is required to help the agriculture cropping system to apply nutrients according to the site-specific need. Thus, to explore the role of application of site-specific and integrated nutrient management (INM), treatments containing 02 fertilizer doses and 03 management techniques for the application of soil organic matter (SOM), P & K were studied in Punjab Pakistan’s rice-wheat system. It is noted that the level of SOM can be improved by repeated application of the Municipal Solid Waste Compost (MSWC). INM treatments contributed a non-significant increase of 7% to 10% in the level of SOM relative to the initial level of 0.82%. The target soil P level of 19.0 ppm is achieved in this study by following a McLean model that is very close to the recommended P level of 21.0 ppm. There is also a decreasing trend in soil level K and negative balance K. Site-specific application of fertilizer envisages the superiority of 6.2% increase in soil P over conventional application in spite of the fact that the total site-recipe of P was 341.0 kg ha-1 applied is very lower than conventionally applied P which was 600.0 kg ha-1 in three years. Ranking of the best to the least favorable indices is documented as P>SOM>K.