Soybean herbage yield, nutritional value and profitability under integrated manures management

Abstract

Organic manures are more preferred and environmentally friendly than chemical fertilizers for minimally contaminating soil, water and environmental resources, but the determination of right source of organic manures continues to remain an unexplored aspect. Considering the important issue, a multi-year fi eld trial was carried out to determine the response of forage soybean to four sources of nutrients such as chemical fertilizers (IF), poultry litter (PL), bovine's farm yard slurry (BFYS) and sewage sludge (SS) and their seven binary combinations (PL+BFYS, PL+SS, PL+IF, BFYS+SS, BFYS+IF, SS+IF and PL+BFYS+SS). Supplementation of organic manures with mineral fertilizers remained superior to their sole application, particularly BFYS + IF was found signifi cantly (p≤0.05) superior for yielding the highest fresh biomass (23.9, 26.4 and 25.7 t ha -1 ) with improved nutritional quality. The same combination of integrated fertilizer management also recorded higher sustainability as per sustainable forage yield index along with the highest net income and the benefi t-cost ratio. PL and SS applied in conjunction with IF performed better than sole or binary application of organic manures. Therefore, BFYS + IF may be recommended for adoption to produce comparable forage yield and nutritional quality of soybean along with reducing dependency on chemical fertilizers.

Integrated Fertilizers Synergistically Bolster Temperate Soybean Growth, Yield, and Oil Content

“…The correlation results of this field study are in liaison with those of Iqbal et al's [6] who opined that plant height had linear association with seed yield for erect type cultivars of soybean, while antagonistic relationship might be observed for spreading type cultivars whereby more partitioning of assimilates toward vegetative sinks could reduce reproductive growth and ultimately lower seed weight tend to reduce seed yield of soybean. It has also been previously reported that stem girth and leaf area had stronger associations with grain yield of towering genotypes of soybean and also direct association of moderate extent for spreading accessions as maximum leaf area recorded higher photosynthetic rate which synthesized maximum carbohydrates which boosted 100-seeds weight and seed yield [4,8,10].…”

“…Soybean has been classified among oilseed crops instead of pulse crops as over 85% of global soybean is processed into vegetable oil that fulfills half of the edible oil demand worldwide. In south Asia, soybean production has remained suboptimal owing to low soil fertility and inadequate fertilization in terms of quantity, quality, and time of application [4][5][6]. Despite rapid increase in food requirement, declining soil fertility has seriously slowed the growth of food production in temperate regions of Asia [7].…”

“…The temperate Himalayan regions of Pakistan and India have witnessed rapidly decreasing soil fertility over time leading to decline in crop productivity [6,8]. It needs emphasis that for ensuring food security, healthy soils form the foundation of food production, conservation of water and biodiversity especially bacterial community in the rhizosphere and nutrient cycling in agricultural eco-systems [9].…”

Optimizing Yield and Quality of Silage and Hay for Pea–Barley Mixtures Ratio under Irrigated Arid Environments

“…Pea-cereal mixtures produced superior CP content, TDN (total digestible nutrient) and RFV (relative feed value) values, compared to the monoculture of oats and barley [6,27]. These findings line up with [28,29], in that they opined that silage prepared from cereal-legume mixtures contained higher protein content and lower fiber content, which boosted the overall nutritional values of silage for large ruminants.…”

Water relations and yield characteristics of mungbean as influenced by foliar application of gibberellic acid (GA3)

“…In the root nodules, legumes fix atmospheric N through a symbiotic fixation process carried out by host-specific strains of rhizobia (Islam et al, 2022). Symbiotic rhizobia can boost yields by accelerating flowering and fruit ripening along with improving soil N in a biologically viable way (Iqbal et al, 2021b;Islam et al, 2021a). Mungbean [Vigna radiata (L.) Wilczek] is an important food legume crop in South Asian countries like India, Pakistan and particularly in Bangladesh (Islam et al, 2017a,b), where it ranks first in terms of acreage and production (Iqbal et al, 2021a).…”