Effect of integrated nutrient management on growth, yield and fertility status of soil after harvest of Nagpur mandarin

Abstract

This research was conducted to investigate the “Effect of integrated nutrient management on growth, yield and fertility status of soil after harvest of Nagpur mandarin (Citrus reticulata Blanco)”during 2019-2020 at the research farm of Central Citrus Research Institute (CCRI), Nagpur. This is the twelve year of experimentation to establish, how much inorganic chemical fertilizers in form of RDF can be saved through application of microbial consortium different modules of INM. was conducted with a total of five treatments viz., T1 - 100% RDF (600 g N - 200 g P - 300 g K - 200 g ZnSO4 - 200 g FeSO4 - 200 g MnSO4 tree-1 year-1), T2 - 45% RDF + 45% vermicompost + microbial consortium, T3- 40% RDF + 40% vermicompost + microbial consortium, T4- 35% RDF + 35% vermicompost + microbial consortium, and T5- 30% RDF + 30% vermicompost + microbial consortium replicated four times on a soil taxonomically classified as Vertic Ustochrept under randomised block design. The microbial consortium carried as many five microbes such as: Bacillus pseudomycoides (MF113272), Acinetobacter radioresistens (MF1132273), Micrococcus yunnanensis (MF113274), Aspergillus flavus (MF113270) and Paenibacillus alvei (MF113275). The observations on growth parameters including plant height, tree spread canopy volume (Table 1), fruit yield (Table 2) and soil fertility status (Table 3), of the trees under the experiment have been organized with a view to study the quantity of chemical fertilizers we can reduce via introduction of microbial consortium loaded vermicompost.