Integrated nutrient management holds great promise in meeting the growing nutrient demands of intensive sugarcane agriculture and maintaining productivity at higher levels with overall improvement in the quality of resource base. It helps to improve and sustain soil fertility and provides a sound basis for crop production systems to meet the changing needs. Balanced use of organic, inorganic and biofertilizers is essential to maintain a good soil physical and chemical environment and also serve as energy source for the soil microbial biomass. Sugar productivity can be sustained by replenishing the nutrients removed by crops through proper recycling of crop residues and factory wastes along with biofertilizers. As organic manures often leave profound residual effect, recommendations need to be made on cropping system basis.

Technology certainly plays a significant part in the precision agriculture scheme, but understanding the appropriateness of the different forms of technology in response to a management problem is an essential element for successful precision agriculture implementation. Many of the enabling technologies discussed are at varying stages of development with many having restricted application and usefulness when applied at the within-paddock level. However, these technologies can still contribute to largerscale forms of precision agriculture at the region, mill, farm or paddock level. If the sugar industry decides that using global positioning system and geographic information system to chase the benefits of selective harvesting is potentially worthwhile, sorting out the spatial and temporal interactions between yield and CCS will be a critical research issue. Thus the adoption of theses technologies in a precision conservation philosophy could assist in managing the interactions between cane farming and environmental protection in the sensitive coastal floodplain ecosystems.

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Investigations were carried out to assess the biomass available for recycling from coconut based high density multispecies cropping system (coconut, clove, banana and pineapple) under graded levels of fertilizers (full, two-third, one-third, one-fourth and one-fifth of the recommended level of fertilizer for each of the component crops and control). The total biomass removed from the system ranged from 19.1 to 27.6 t ha-1 year-1. The highest biomass production was recorded from two-third level of fertilizer dose (27.6 t ha-1 year-1). Out of the total biomass obtained, the quantity available for recycling ranged from 12.7 to 18.5 t ha-1 year-1, which can contribute 56 to 110 kg N, 6.7 to 13.5 kg P and 108 to 225 kg K per hectare.

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