ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Integrated and Site-Specific Fertilizer Application
Role in Rice-Wheat Cropping System
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1
Soil Fertility Research Institute, Lahore, Agriculture Department, Punjab, Pakistan
2
Pesticide Quality Control Laboratory, Multan
3
Department of Soil Science Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan, Punjab, Pakistan
Submission date: 2020-05-25
Final revision date: 2020-07-11
Acceptance date: 2020-07-29
Online publication date: 2020-11-27
Publication date: 2021-02-05
Corresponding author
Muhammad Akram Qazi
Agriculture Department, Punjab, Pakistan, Soil Fertility Research Institute, Lahore, 112-K, Johar Town, 53700, Lahore, Pakistan
Pol. J. Environ. Stud. 2021;30(2):1777-1784
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ABSTRACT
Continuous use of mineral fertilizers can worsen soil quality, leading to declining productivity and
soil pollution. An effective integrated fertilizer strategy is required to help the agriculture cropping
system to apply nutrients according to the site-specific need. Thus, to explore the role of application
of site-specific and integrated nutrient management (INM), treatments containing 02 fertilizer doses
and 03 management techniques for the application of soil organic matter (SOM), P & K were studied
in Punjab Pakistan’s rice-wheat system. It is noted that the level of SOM can be improved by repeated
application of the Municipal Solid Waste Compost (MSWC). INM treatments contributed a nonsignificant
increase of 7% to 10% in the level of SOM relative to the initial level of 0.82%. The target
soil P level of 19.0 ppm is achieved in this study by following a McLean model that is very close to
the recommended P level of 21.0 ppm. There is also a decreasing trend in soil level K and negative
balance K. Site-specific application of fertilizer envisages the superiority of 6.2% increase in soil P over
conventional application in spite of the fact that the total site-recipe of P was 341.0 kg ha-1 applied is
very lower than conventionally applied P which was 600.0 kg ha-1 in three years. Ranking of the best to
the least favorable indices is documented as P>SOM>K.