Boosting rice (Oryza sativa L.) production through land-specific and yield goal basis fertilizer application

Abstract

Exogenous application of essential plant nutrient elements is one of the vital management practices to enhance crop yield, which is a crucial issue to feed the increasing world population. An experiment was laid out to compare different site-specific fertiliser application guidelines in terms of growth, yield and economic performance of rice. The fertiliser management guidelines treatments were rice crop manager (RCM), soil test based (STB), quantitative evaluation of fertility for tropical soils (QUEFTS), Soil Resource Development Institute (SRDI) model and only nitrogen (N) fertiliser. Rice varieties BRRI dhan28 and BRRI dhan29 were used as planting materials. The experimental design was split-plot with three replicates of the five fertiliser management treatments split into two sub-plots for the rice varieties. The results showed that higher number of panicles and improved grain yield was obtained by QUEFTS and SRDI during cultivating BRRI dhan28 and BRRI dhan29, respectively. However, the grain yield of RCM was comparable with that of SRDI and QUEFTS. The comparatively higher amount of plant N, phosphorus and potassium were taken up by BRRI dhan29 and BRRI dhan28 with SRDI and QUEFTS model, respectively. The fertiliser cost for RCM in BRRI dhan28 and SRDI in BRRI dhan29 were relatively higher than others except only N applied treatment. Maximum gross return and profit over fertiliser cost was obtained from QUEFTS in BRRI dhan28 and SRDI in BRRI dhan29. The gross return and return over fertiliser cost obtained from RCM was comparable with that of SRDI in BRRI dhan28. From the results it can be concluded that the fertiliser recommendation by SRDI model might be recommended for cultivating BRRI dhan29 while the QUEFTS model might be recommended for BRRI dhan28.