Abstract
The government of Nepal has recommended blanket fertilizer application for rice cultivation, which results in lower nutrient use efficiency (NUE) particularly under rainfed conditions. With the aim of finding an appropriate nutrient management practices concerning rice production and profitability, a field experiment was conducted during rainy season of 2017 and 2018 at Kavrepalanchowk and Dang district of Nepal. Altogether, five treatments comprising various nutrient management practices viz. Nutrient Expert Model (NE), use of Leaf Color Chart (LCC), Government Recommended Fertilizer Dose (GON), Farm Yard Manure (FYM), and Farmers’ Field Practice (FFP), were laid out in RCBD with four replications in farmers’ fields. The analysis of variance showed significant difference between treatments for test weight and grain yield in Kavrepalanchowk whereas all traits except number of effective tillers were significant in Dang. The significantly higher grain yield and harvest index were obtained in NE, followed by LCC; and the overall straw yield was highest in LCC, followed by NE in both the locations. Also, yield gap analysis suggested the NE had 44.44% and 23.97% increase in yield as compared to FPP in Kavrepalanchowk and Dang, respectively. The combined analysis with Best Linear Unbiased Estimator revealed the interaction of nutrient management and location significantly effects the straw yield and harvest index across both the locations. The estimated mean straw yield and harvest index were 10.93 t/ha and 34.98%, respectively. Both correlation study and biplot of principal component analysis signaled grain yield had positive correlation with all other traits. Furthermore, the net revenue was maximum for NE, followed by LCC in both the locations. The benefit: cost ratio was highest for NE which was 1.55 in Kavrepalanchowk and 2.61 in Dang. On the basis of these findings, NE and LCC can be effectively used as nutrient management practice by the farmers to obtain maximum production and profitability in Rice.
Highlights
Rice (Oryza sativa) is important cereals fulfilling food necessities of more than half of the world’s population [1]
The reason for high straw yield in Leaf Color Chart (LCC) and Nutrient Expert Model (NE) because of balance nitrogen applied that influenced the vegetative growth, plant height and number of tillers leading to a high straw yield
The authors claimed that rice managed under NE performs better than rice managed under Farmers’ Field Practice (FFP) and Government Recommended Fertilizer Dose (GON) due to the balanced and right source of fertilizer applied at the right time
Summary
Rice (Oryza sativa) is important cereals fulfilling food necessities of more than half of the world’s population [1]. Rice is cultivated over 162.06 million hectares, producing 504.17 million metric tons of milled rice in 2019 [2]. In Nepal, rice is cultivated in 1,458,915-hectare, producing 5,550,878 metric tons of rice, with an average productivity of 3.8 tons/ha during fiscal year 2019–2020 [4]. Nepal’s current rice demand (2512 tons currently) is predicted to double by 2030 (4518 tons) due to population pressure. The study of [6] forecasted that household demand and production would fluctuate from 19% to 80% by 2030. It is necessary to increase rice production and productivity to close the gap in supply and demand with the limited resource available, owing to the unstable rice yield due to insect, pest, nematodes, declination of soil fertility, imbalanced fertilizer use and poor nutrient management practices [7,8]
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