Effect on soil biological properties as influenced by different nutrient management approaches under pigeonpea cultivation in Vertisol

Abstract

A study was conducted to know the effect of different nutrient management approaches along with FYM on soil biological properties in pigeonpea cultivation during 2016-17 and 2017-18 in farmer’s field of Raichur district. The experiment was laid out in Randomized Block Design with three replications and ten treatments. The results revealed that, application of 150% RDF approach with FYM at 90 DAS and at harvest stage of pigeonpea significantly increased the beneficial microbial load of bacteria (37.08 and 22.47 X 107 cfu g-1), fungi (37.08 and 22.47 X 107 cfu g-1) and actinomycetes (16.07 and 9.63 X 104 cfu g-1), microbial biomass (277 and 261 µg CO2-C g-1 soil for 24 hrs) and enzyme activities of dehydrogenase (21.09 and 15.73 μg TPF g-1 soil for 24 hrs), phosphatase (69.37 and 66.8 μg PNP g-1 soil for 1 hr) and urease (170 and 161 μg NH4- N g-1 soil for 2 hrs) in soil, respectively.