Agricultural chemistry and soil science

Using a 40 years old long-term fertility experiment, we studied the fate of different sources of applied P into its nutrition to wheat in calcareous soils in a pearl millet-wheat cropping system during rabi 2009 and 2010. Results showed that water soluble sources of phosphatic fertilizers (Single super phosphate, Diammonium phosphate, Urea ammonium phosphate) were found superior over partially water soluble (nitrophosphate) and mineral acid soluble (RP) sources in terms of grain yield and P uptake. With increasing levels of P from 60 to 120 kg P 2 O 5 ha -1 , grain yield and P uptake increased significantly. Cumulative mode of P application was found the best for grain yield and P uptake as compared to direct and residual mode. The available P, saloid-P and Al-P were positively and significantly correlated with grain yield (r = 0.829** to 0.894**), straw yield (r = 0.833** to 0.890**), P concentration in grain (r = 0.666* to 0.749*), and total P uptake (r = 0.860** to 0.928**). Multiple regression equations between yield and P uptake and various inorganic P fraction of soil also indicated that saloid-P and Al-P were the important forms of inorganic P and contributed mainly towards grain and straw yield and total P uptake.

In West Bengal (India), 75 blocks in 9 districts across 38 865 km 2 are reported to be severely affected by groundwater arsenic (As) contamination (Chowdhury et al. 2000), of which 17 administrative blocks of the Nadia district are contaminated (http://www.soesju.org/arsenic/wb.htm). Nadia is very promising in vegetable production and declared as Agri Export Zone (AEZ) for vegetables (http://agriexchange.apeda.gov.in/). Arsenic contamination in groundwater in the lower Gangetic plain emerged through weathering of As-rich base-metal sulphide and subsequent supply of As-rich iron hydroxide to downstream Ganges sediments (Bhattacharya et al. 1997, Nickson et al. 2000). Arsenic uptake by crop plants grown in soil contaminated with high concentration of arsenic and irrigated with arsenic-contaminated ground water has been reported (Abedin et al. 2002, Sahoo and Mukherjee 2014, Bastías and Beldarrain 2016). Accumulation of arsenic in vegetables, however, may impact (i) the physiological and biochemical processes of vegetables and in turn the quality of the product (Zhang et al. 2005); (ii) entry of carcinogen in human through food chain (Balakhir

Present investigation has been conducted to assess the efficiency of few selected and simulated options of integrated nutrient management and plant growth regulator in improving okra growth and increasing okra yield (Abelmoschus esculentus L. Moench) in an inceptisol at Gayeshpur, West Bengal, India (23 • N 89 • E at 9.75 m above MSL). The experimental soils were neutral, non-saline, sandy loam, low in organic carbon, available N, DTPA extractable micronutrients, moderate in available P and medium in available K contents. The experiment was laid out in an asymmetric factorial design with seven different treatments of integrated nutrient management (INM) and two levels of gibberellic acid (GA). Okra yield, macro and micronutrients uptake by okra pod, available nutrient status in post-harvest soil were observed to increase significantly when chemical N and P were supplemented by organic manures and/or bacterial fertilizers along with application of GA. Application of 75% of NP + total K through chemical fertilizers along with Azospirillum, PSB, VAM and FYM restored highest soil nutrient availability and okra pod nutrient accumulation. Highest okra yield and best economic return could be achieved when PSB and FYM were used to supplement 75% of N, P + total K. Okra yield models, developed through artificial neural network (ANN), clearly indicated the manifest role of soil and okra pod N, P, Zn, Fe and Mn in increasing productivity under interventions of bacterial fertilizers (PSB and VAM).

The integrated use of chemical and organic fertilizers can help in sustainable and environmentally sound nutrient management of soils. A study was conducted in the farmer’s field of Godaghari, Rajshahi from February to May 2012 to investigate the effect of integrated nutrient management on nutrient uptake by rice cv. NERICA 10 and economization of inputs. Six treatments viz. T1 = Control, T2 = RFD for MYG + cowdung @ 5 t ha-1, T3 = RFD for HYG, T4 = RFD for HYG + cowdung @ 5 t ha-1, T5 = RFD for HYG + cowdung @ 5 t ha-1 based on IPNS, and T6 = RFD for HYG + 10% excess fertilizer of HYG were used. The experiment was laid out in a randomized complete block design with three replications. Results showed that the uptake of N, P, K, S, Ca and Mg by both grain and straw of rice were statistically significant due to use of integrated nutrient management. The highest nutrient uptake was recorded from the treatment T5 and the lowest value was obtained from control. Combined application of co...

Biweekly block level Agromet bulletins were disseminated based on medium range weather forecast with an objective to assess the effectiveness and usefulness of Block level Agro Advisory Services (AAS) and quantify the economic benefits through adopting the micro scale agromet advisory in their day to day agricultural operations at Malda, West Bengal. Two farmers groups were considered for the study on the basis of adoption and non-adoption of the agro-met advisories. Crop situation of these farmers were compared with nearby fields having the same crops where forecast were not adopted among non AAS farmers. The entire cost incurred along with yield and net returns were calculated from sowing to marketing of goods. Similarly, the weather forecast and actual weather data received from India Meteorological Department, New Delhi were compared to verify the accuracy of rainfall forecast for the year 2019-20 at GKMS centre, Malda KVK, West Bengal. It was apparent that the value of ratio sc...

Biweekly block level Agromet bulletins were disseminated based on medium range weather forecast with an objective to assess the effectiveness and usefulness of Block level Agro Advisory Services (AAS) and quantify the economic benefits through adopting the micro scale agromet advisory in their day to day agricultural operations at Malda, West Bengal. Two farmers groups were considered for the study on the basis of adoption and non-adoption of the agro-met advisories. Crop situation of these farmers were compared with nearby fields having the same crops where forecast were not adopted among non AAS farmers. The entire cost incurred along with yield and net returns were calculated from sowing to marketing of goods. Similarly, the weather forecast and actual weather data received from India Meteorological Department, New Delhi were compared to verify the accuracy of rainfall forecast for the year 2019-20 at GKMS centre, Malda KVK, West Bengal. It was apparent that the value of ratio sc...

Climate is one of the single most important factors affecting ecosystems and water resources (Mazumder and Molders, 2009). Both climate change and climate variability can lead to severe impacts on rainfed farming system through reducing its yields and profitability. It is desirable to have an idea about the change of some highly sensitive climatic variables like air temperature, rainfall and radiation on crop growth and development in addition to get future water resources planning and management in the region (Chen et al., 2013). The projection of future air temperature is important as it influences crop evapotranspiration (ET), yield and quality. Assessment of long term past and future climate change works over many places, sometimes faced different types of obstacles due to limited data availability and data quality which contains lots of missing values. It is to be mentioned that locations having some missing values in the long-term meteorological data, LARS-WG can play a crucial role to generate continuous data which can be used to replace missing values, then this new data series without any missing values can be used to estimate long-term climate change information location-wise. Weather generators (WGs) are statistical models that generate numerous possible weather variables including precipitation, temperatures, solar radiation, and wind velocity at a daily time step and, ideally, with the same statistical characteristics as those of observed data (Trzaska and Schnarr, 2014). LARS-WG is a stochastic weather generator specially designed for climate change impact studies (Semenov and Burrow, 1997). In India WGs have been used by Bal et al. (2010) and Reddy et al. (2014) over Punjab and Telengana, respectively for climate change studies. Haris et al. (2010) used LARS-WG for validating the model over Bihar regions for climate change assessment. Kumar et al. (2013) suggested that the model is able to downscale the point data to quiet a good extent which can be used successfully for climate assessment studies. Sarkar and Chicholikar (2015) studied the performance of LARS-WG over Gujarat and concluded that the model performed excellent in generating rainfall and temperature parameters with high accuracy level. 2010 was considered as reference data sources for assessing the performance of LARS-WG. At first, daily IMD gridded rainfall and temperature data were interpolated using bi-linear interpolation (Akhter et al.

Mesh covered pan evaporation at Bhagalpur was correlated with potential evapotranspiration (PET) computed by using empirical methods of FAO-Penmann Monteith (1998), Thornthwaite (1948), Papadakis (1965), Jensen and Haise (1963) and Modified Jenson and Haise (1975). Weather data for 4 years namely 2014-2017 for Bhagalpur was used to compute the potential evapotranspiration by different empirical methods. Linear regression equations were fitted between monthly PET by computed by different individual methods and the measured pan evapotranspiration. Pan evaporation showed good correlation with monthly PET having R2 value of 92.8 for Jensen and Haise, 91.8 for modified Jensen and Haise, 90.8 for FAO-Penmann Monteith and moderate correlation was observed in case of Thorntwaite (58.7) and Papadkais Method (61.4). There exists biasness between estimated and observed pan evaporation. The biasness was positive when pan evaporation was on the higher sides and biasness was negative when the pan...

Climate is one of the single most important factors affecting ecosystems and water resources (Mazumder and Molders, 2009). Both climate change and climate variability can lead to severe impacts on rainfed farming system through reducing its yields and profitability. It is desirable to have an idea about the change of some highly sensitive climatic variables like air temperature, rainfall and radiation on crop growth and development in addition to get future water resources planning and management in the region (Chen et al., 2013). The projection of future air temperature is important as it influences crop evapotranspiration (ET), yield and quality. Assessment of long term past and future climate change works over many places, sometimes faced different types of obstacles due to limited data availability and data quality which contains lots of missing values. It is to be mentioned that locations having some missing values in the long-term meteorological data, LARS-WG can play a crucial role to generate continuous data which can be used to replace missing values, then this new data series without any missing values can be used to estimate long-term climate change information location-wise. Weather generators (WGs) are statistical models that generate numerous possible weather variables including precipitation, temperatures, solar radiation, and wind velocity at a daily time step and, ideally, with the same statistical characteristics as those of observed data (Trzaska and Schnarr, 2014). LARS-WG is a stochastic weather generator specially designed for climate change impact studies (Semenov and Burrow, 1997). In India WGs have been used by Bal et al. (2010) and Reddy et al. (2014) over Punjab and Telengana, respectively for climate change studies. Haris et al. (2010) used LARS-WG for validating the model over Bihar regions for climate change assessment. Kumar et al. (2013) suggested that the model is able to downscale the point data to quiet a good extent which can be used successfully for climate assessment studies. Sarkar and Chicholikar (2015) studied the performance of LARS-WG over Gujarat and concluded that the model performed excellent in generating rainfall and temperature parameters with high accuracy level. 2010 was considered as reference data sources for assessing the performance of LARS-WG. At first, daily IMD gridded rainfall and temperature data were interpolated using bi-linear interpolation (Akhter et al.

Enhancing crop water productivity by genetic improvements or agronomic manipulations and reducing evapotranspiration losses from soil and plant surface is the need of the hour. Selection and breeding of traits which lead to increase in crop and water productivity like early maturing and stress tolerant cultivars with deep and thick root system, hairy leaves and increase in partitioning of assimilates towards grains etc. can help in increasing the water productivity. Different management options like, alteration in planting time, more water efficient planting methods, tillage practices, irrigation management, intercropping, use of anti-transpirants, row orientation, planting geometry and application of mulches and shelter belts can play important role for sustainability of water resources and crop productivity. However, the best option varies according to the location, prevailing weather conditions as well as social and economic conditions of the farmers.

Jute (Corchorus capsularis L.), the source of golden fibre is one of the major crops grown in eastern India, especially in the state of West Bengal. A field experiment was conducted at the University farm, Coochbehar (26 o 19´N, 89 o 23´E and 43 m above mean sea level), on an acid Entisol in the humid tropical tarai agroclimatic zone of West Bengal with Jute (cv. JRC 321) to study the direct effect of FYM, lime and magnesium sulphate along with recommended doses of NPK fertilizers application on the fibre yield and their residual effect on nutrient availability in the soil. There were increase in CEC and exchangeable Ca and Mg content of the soil and the availability of residual NPK due to application of FYM. Incorporation of lime and magnesium sulphate alone or in combination decreased the exchange as well as pH dependent acidity through increasing high base saturation while lowering the exchangeable Al 3+ to nil. The available NPK increased significantly with liming. Jute crop responded significantly in terms of yield, and the highest yield was observed with the application of FYM, which was at par with lime treated plots followed by magnesium sulphate in combination with lime, and magnesium sulphate alone.

A field study (1999-2000 to 2001-2002) was carried out to optimize the irrigation frequency and suitable water application methods for cauliflower with a view to increase curd yield (CY) and water use efficiency (WUE). Check Basin (CB), Each Furrow (EF) and Alternate Furrow (AF) methods were tested with three irrigation frequencies depending on the attainment of soil matric potential (« m ) value at 0.2 m depth as: −0.03 MPa (F 1 ), −0.05 MPa (F 2 ) and −0.07 MPa (F 3 ). Maximum CY was recorded under F 1 and decreased by 10.4 and 31.4%, respectively under F 2 and F 3 frequencies. In contrast, WUE decreased by 9.3% from F 3 to F 1 . Highest CY and WUE obtained under CB followed by EF and AF methods. Furrow application methods saved 12-24% irrigation water over CB method. Maximum soil water stress coefficient (K s ) recorded at curd development stage in comparison to other stages. Both seasonal evapotranspiration (ET a ) and yield-moisture stress index (Kys) recorded positive linear relationships with CY. Present study shows a crop response factor of 0.822 for cauliflower. In this region, cauliflower should be irrigated with check basin method at an interval of 8-10 days.