Effects of organic manures and inorganic fertilizers on soil fertility and productivity of Samai-Horsegram cropping sequence in Lithic Haplustept

Millets are amazing in their nutrition content. Each of the millets is three to five times nutritionally superior to the widely promoted rice and wheat in terms of proteins, minerals and vitamins. Most millet farmers use farmyard manures and in recent times, household produced waste as nutrient source. Therefore, they couldn’t increase the crop productivity. Combined application of organic manures and chemical fertilizers could provide higher benefit towards crop yield and soil health sustainability as compared to only application of chemical fertilizers for millets under rainfed conditions. In future, where water and food crisis stares us in the face, millets can become the food of security. By focusing of above challenges the field experiments were carried out to study on application of organic manures and chemical fertilizers in the samai-horsegram cropping system as rainfed in the non-calcareous sandy loam soils of Lithic Haplustept for two consecutive years of 2015–2016 and 2016–2017 at Regional Research Station, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Paiyur of Krishnagiri district. The experiment consisted of four treatments: T1 (Control), T2 (Organic Manuring), T3 (Inorganic Fertilization; (RDF) Recommended Dose of N, P2O5, and K2O @ 44:22:0 kg ha-1), and T4 (Integrated Nutrient Management; FYM 12.5 t ha-1 + Recommended Dose of N, P2O5, and K2O of 44:22:0 kg ha-1 + Seed Treatment with Bio-Fertilizer). The samai (Little millet- Panicum sumatrense) results showed that adopting integrated nutrient management practices resulted in higher grain yields of 783 kg ha-1 with yield increases of 20 percent over inorganic fertilization and 25 percent over organic manure, as well as a higher B: C ratio of 2.01. Additionally, a higher total nutrient intake of 18.7, 5.3, and 21.9 kg N, P, and K ha-1 was observed. However, there was a considerable difference from the control plot, but there was no difference between organic manure and chemical fertilization. Similar to residual horse gram results, integrated nutrient management produced higher seed yield (498 kg ha-1) with a B:C ratio of 1.85, as well as maximum plant height, number of branches, pods per plant, and seed yield per pod.