Sustainable nutrient solutions: enhancing finger millet growth and yield through integrated nutrient management

Abstract

Finger millet (Eleusine coracana L.) is a highly climate-resilient crop known for its adaptability to adverse environmental conditions and climate vagaries, such as drought, poor soil fertility, and low-input farming systems. The present study aims to assess the effects of organic and inorganic nutrient sources on periodic growth parameters like plant height, dry matter and leaf area index. Besides, grain and straw yield along with soil available nutrients were also assessed as influenced by various organic and inorganic treatments. The field experiment was conducted during the rainy season, 2023 at ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, Assam, under a humid sub-tropical climate with alluvial soil. The experiment employed a splitplot design with three replications, featuring main plot treatments of organic manure (1 t/ha), biofertilizer consortia, and farmyard manure (FYM@5 t/ha), while sub-plot treatments consisted of nitrogen (N) levels varying from 0 to 80 kg/ha.The results demonstrated that the combination of FYM application at 5 t/ha and 80 kg N/ha produced the most favourable outcomes in terms of growth parameters, grain and straw yield and residual soil fertility due to the synergistic effects of combining organic and inorganic nutrient management strategies.