Sugarcane nutrition for food and environmental security/ Nutrição da cana-de-açúcar para segurança alimentar e ambiental

Abstract

Sugarcane is an important cash crop cultivated globally from temperate to tropical regions. Improving cane yield and recovery sustainably is an important research area for improving livelihoods of the cane farmers. Among different approaches sill judicious and integrated use of nutrients as per plant needs holds the special place. Further, applying need based N management through optical gadgets viz. Leaf color chart (LCC), SPAD, Green seeker, integrated nutrient management, fertigation, special focus on for improving the efficiency of different fertilizers through different state of art technologies. For having higher fertilizer use efficiency in sugarcane, some aspects of fertilization especially How much? What type of? When to add? Is it worth? Number of splits? Mode of action? must be considered both for seed or ratoon. Further, soil textural class and climatic conditions on one side while on changing climatic conditions also affected it a lot. Further, inherent fertility status of the soils is also an important factor which affects the fate of applied fertilizers. There is a need to create awareness in between the farmers for not to applying huge quantity of different fertilizers as per their neighboring farmers, rather farmer should be smart enough to adopt different technologies in a smart way for having better benefits and thus livelihoods as the purpose is to fed the canes but not the soil. In the present review an attempt being made to compare the comparative performance of sugarcane with respect to fertilization for finally guiding the sugarcane cultivars. Idea is to enlighten them regarding need based sustainable fertilization with an aim to improve the fertilizer use efficiencies for having improved yield and quality parameters instead of loading the soil with much of fertilizers which further have environmental concerns.