Floor management of banana orchard using banana biomat mulch and leguminous cover crop for sustainable production

Abstract

The experiment was carried out at ICAR-AICRP on Fruits, Mohanpur centre of Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya, Mondouri, Nadia, West Bengal in Randomized Block Design with 6 treatments viz., T₁: Banana Biomat Mulch (BBM) @ 30 kg fresh/m2 + Leguminous Cover Crops (LCC) @ 3g seeds/m2 + 0% recommended dose of fertilizer (RDF), T₂: T₁ + 25% RDF, T₃: T₁ + 50% RDF, T₄: T1 + 75% RDF, T₅: T₁ + 100% RDF and T₆: Control – conventional practices (no BBM & LCC) with 100% RDF. Treatments were imposed thrice a year on orchard floor of banana cv. Martaman. Observations were recorded on suppression of weed growth, weed control efficiency, soil moisture conservation, status of organic carbon content, bunch weight, finger weight, TSS and B: C ratio. The results of the investigation revealed that application of BBM+LCC with 75 or 100% of RDF (T4 & T5) significantly suppressed weed growth in orchard floors (176.01 g fresh weeds/ m2) and increased weed control efficiency (87.85%) and soil moisture conservation (20.01% to 20.34% vegetative growth & 22.64% to 23.64% during reproductive growth), soil organic carbon content (0.81%) and higher bunch weight, finger weight, TSS and B: C ratio (19.43 kg, 118.31 g, 21.26 °Brix and 3.11, respectively), as compared with conventional practice (T6 : control) and rest of the treatments T1, T2 & T3 (BBM + LCC and RDF @ 0-50%).