Soil biological properties as affected by the conjunction of chemical fertilizers, bacterial consortia and bio-enhancers in foxtail millet cultivation

Abstract

During Kharif 2019, a field experiment was conducted with eight treatments replicated three times in Randomized Block Design at College farm, PJTSAU, Rajendranagar, Hyderabad. The aim of the study is to investigate the combined effect of chemical fertilizers and bio-agents (bacterial consortia and bio-enhancers) on soil biological parameters (bacterial population, urease, dehydrogenase, acid phosphatase and alkaline phosphatase) under foxtail millet cultivation in semi-arid region where soil and climatic constraints prevail in general. The bacterial population in the rhizosphere soil was found to be greater in all the treatments that received bacterial consortia appended with bio-enhancers compared to the remaining treatments as they are rich in microbial population. The soil enzyme activity was found to be higher when bioagents were used in conjunction with fertilizers, similar to bacterial population. The use of bacterial consortia or bio-enhancers alone also improved enzyme activity when compared to the control, while fertilizers alone, were poor in the activity of above enzymes. The percentage increase in the overall biological activity over the initial value was found to be highest when bioagents were used along with the chemical fertilizers at 50% flowering and harvest stages whereas it was found least in the control and lower in the treatments applied with chemical fertilizers alone.