Enhancing rice productivity through combined soil and plant application of organic and inorganic sources of nutrients: A review

Abstract

Soil is the natural media for plant growth. Plant nutrients in soil, whether naturally blessed or artificially maintained, are a major determinant of the success or failure of a crop production system. The crop sector of Indian agriculture must bear the responsibility, above all else, of producing enough food to meet the requirements of the country’s ever-growing population. The imperative need is to achieve substantially higher crop yield than the present yield levels from the narrow land resources on a sustainable basis. A sustainable crop production system with high-yield targets cannot be balanced against nutrient removal by crops unless nutrients are applied to soil. A staple food for 2.7 billion people is rice, almost half the world’s population and has grown by more than half of the world’s farmers. In India, rice is the most important and staple food crop for more than two third of the population. Even though there is a large area under rice cultivation; the productivity is low due to various interaction factors. The imbalance usage of fertilizers is one of the main factors responsible for the low productivity and also the use of inorganic fertilizers continuously resulted in declining of soil fertility. To obtain the better yield, farmers apply more and more fertilizers year after year due to decline in soil fertility. Use of organic manures is a must to achieve higher and sustainable rice yields. It is, however, difficult to meet the crop nutrient requirements with only bulky organic manure and there is a need for combined application of different sources of nutrients for sustaining the desired crop productivity. Integrated nutrient management (INM) improves soil fertility and crop productivity status rather than mineral fertilizers alone. Most of the research findings reviewed in this review indicated that among the integrated nutrient management combinations, application of chemical fertilizers combined with organic manures in equal proportion improved sustainable rice productivity, nutrient uptake and soil nutrient status. Use of organic manures has been found to be satisfactory in arresting the decline in productivity through correction of deficiency of major and micronutrients and influencing the physical and biological properties of soil. Integrated application of inorganic fertilizers with different sources of organic manures in different proportions has significant role to rise rice productivity, improve nutrient uptake by plants and maintain soil nutrient status in rice based cropping systems. Therefore, the review has been taken from existing literature which proved that the combine nutrient management is a method to boost the rice yield and maintain the sustainability of the production capacity of the soil.