Integrated nutrient management strategies for sustainable rice production: Impact on growth, development, yield, and environmental sustainability

Abstract

Integrated nutrient management (INM) strategies play a pivotal role in enhancing sustainable rice production by optimizing nutrient use efficiency, improving soil health, and minimizing environmental degradation. INM combines organic amendments viz., farmyard manure, compost, green manure with inorganic fertilizers to ensure balanced nutrient supply, promoting robust rice growth and development. Through INM not only assuring increased production, sustain productivity, improve soil health, but it is also becoming a very useful strategy on soil environmental and ecosystem benefits. Soil microbes depend on organic matter for energy, carbon, and nitrogen, which is how it is an essential part of integrated nutrient management. It improves the soil's physical and chemical properties as well. Furthermore, the adoption of INM aligns with climate-resilient farming, as it improves drought tolerance and reduces methane emissions from paddy field. Despite its benefits, widespread implementation faces challenges such as farmer awareness, accessibility of organic inputs, and policy support. The goal of integrated nutrient management is to reduce overall input costs, create healthy soil physiochemical conditions, remove production limitations, balance soil health, reduce pollution through recycling agricultural waste, and meet plant nutrient requirements in a cost-effective way and preserve environmental integrity, ensuring long-term food security and ecological balance.