A field experiment was conducted during the summer season of 2000-2001 at the Vegetable Research Farm of Indian Agricultural Research Institute (I.A.R.I.), New Delhi (India) to test the efficacy of three Azotobacter strains as a potential supplement to nitrogenous fertilizer in improving growth and yield of onion cv. Pusa Madhvi. The treatments consisted of factorial combination of four levels of nitrogen (0, 25, 50 and 75 kg N ha-1) and three Azotobacter strains (CBD-15, AS-4 and M-4) with two uninoculated controls one with full dose of N (100 kg ha-1) and the other without NPK. Application of 75 kg N ha-1 along with inoculation of CBD-15 was found to have significantly increased most of the growth and yield parameters, soil available nitrogen, and nitrogen content in the bulb followed by M-4 inoculation as compared to application of full dose of nitrogen without the inoculation. Days to bulb initiation were significantly reduced due to inoculation with CBD-15 or M-4 along with 50 kg N ha-1 whereas days to bulb maturity were significantly reduced due to inoculation with any of the strains along with the same N rate (50 kg ha-1) as compared to application of full dose of nitrogen without the inoculation. The finding demonstrated a saving of 50 kg N ha-1 without significantly affecting yield and an average increase of 13.5% marketable yield due to Azotobacter inoculation in the presence of 75 kg N ha-1 .

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Rice bran Parboiled rice polish Phytase Growth Jinding duckling A total of 48 straight-run day old ducklings (DOD) of Jinding were fed ad libitum on four (4) iso-nitrogenous and iso-caloric diets (3000 Kcal ME/kg and 22% CP) having 3 replicates each. The diets were formulated using 20% rice bran (RB) or parboiled rice polish (PRP) with or without exogenous phytase (10g/kg). Ducklings were fed up to 28 days of age to observe the effect of RB and PRP based diet on the growth performance. Feeding of PRP based diet with enzyme resulted in increased live weight gain and feed efficiency. There was no difference in feed intake on both diets (p>0.05). However, the formulating cost of PRP based diet was higher than that of RB based diet. Addition of enzyme promoted growth and feed efficiency but did not affect feed intake significantly during the experimental period and increased feed cost. Therefore, it appeared that the biological performance of PRP based diet with or without enzyme was better than that of RB based diet. However, the feed cost was less in RB based diet with or without phytase. Therefore, to formulate low cost diet, RB seemed to be superior over PRP, but for better growth performance PRP can be used in the diet of ducklings. In conclusion, the findings demonstrated that the PRP based diets with or without phytase was superior to RB based diets with or without phytase in terms of growth performance, but RB based diet was superior in terms of feed cost. Therefore, it appeared that increased growth performance cannot be a basis of using RB and PRP. Rather, costeffectiveness of feeding ducklings on RB and PRP based diet must be taken into account.

An experiment was carried out at the Agronomy Field Laboratory, Bangladesh Agricultural University, Mymensingh, during July to December 2006 to study the root growth of four Transplant Aman rice varieties as influenced by NPKS fertilization. The experiment was laid out in a split-plot design with three replications. The experiment consisted of four varieties viz. BRRI dhan30, BRRI dhan31, BRRI dhan40 and BRRI dhan41; and four levels of fertilizers viz. 0, 50%, 100% and 150% of the recommended dose of NPKS. BRRI dhan41 had better performance in all root parameters. All root parameters except number of roots hill-1 performed better at high level of fertilizer. The interaction effect between variety and fertilizer level was significant in respect of number of roots hill-1, fresh weight of root (except at 30 days after transplanting (DAT) and 90 DAT), dry weight of root, fresh weight of above ground plant part (except at 30 DAT and 90 DAT) and dry weight of above ground plant part (except at 90 DAT). Keywords: Root growth; Rice varieties; NPKS fertilizer DOI: 10.3329/jbau.v6i2.4816 J. Bangladesh Agril. Univ. 6(2): 235-238, 2008