Optimizing soil quality and mustard (Brassica juncea) yield through spacing and sesbania incorporation

Soil fertility is an important variable in achieving higher production scales. Sesbania is frequently utilized as an alternate material for soil fertility improvement since it improves the chemical characteristics of soil and supplies plant nourishment after decomposition. An experiment was conducted at Khulna Agricultural University to investigate the way plant spacing and sesbania incorporation affect mustard yield, yield characteristics, and soil fertility. The study laid out randomized complete block design included six treatments, which consisted of three different spacing’s, along with the incorporation of sesbania green manuring crops as a soil fertility improver and using BARI-14 sarisha as the test crop. The findings of the experiment showed that the majority of the yield and yield components notably varied with variation of spacing and sesbania application. Results showed that sesbania incorporated soil with optimum (30 × 20 cm) plant spacing positively impacted highest mustard yield (1.66 tha-1), 5% more oil content and 2.4% more siliqua plant-1 compared to no green manuring plot. On the other hand, plants set up widely (30 × 30 cm) brought in more siliquae plant-1, seeds siliqua-1 and 1,000-seed weight than closer spacing. Furthermore, inclusion of sesbania resulted in improvement of organic matter (7%), available nitrogen (30%), phosphorus (30%) and potassium (50%) in soil compared to non-incorporated soil. Therefore, an optimal spacing of 30 × 20, along with the integration of sesbania (5t/ha), is required to achieve enhanced mustard yield and oil content, as well as improved soil fertility.