Integrating Organic Amendments with Chelated Micronutrients for Improving Finger Millet (Eleusine coracana L.) Productivity under Calcareous Soil Condition

Background: Calcareous soils, covering 1.5 billion acres globally, which is around 17% of the country’s geographical area of which India is having about 229 million hectares. Excessive NaCO3 and CaCO3 levels form water-impermeable caliche layers which limits mineralization and water retention in soil causes phosphorous fixation and ammonia volatilization. Under these condition plant experiences the iron chlorosis, poor germination and micro nutrient deficiencies. Synthetic fertilisers are avoided in calcareous soil due to nitrogen loss via volatilization and phosphorous fixation into insoluble form. To overcome these constraints addition of organic amendments along with chelated micronutrients are crucial for enhancing soil properties, nutrient uptake and crop productivity under calcareous condition. Methods: In this context a field experiment was conducted at Karunya Institute of Technology and Sciences, Coimbatore during rabi 2023-24 to study the effect of organic amendments and foliar nutrition under calcareous soil condition. The experiment was laid out in Factorial randomised block design with three replications. The treatments comprised of different organic amendments as a soil application and chelated micronutrient as a foliar application. Result: Results indicated that the application of Pongamia seed cake @ 1.46 t ha-1+100 % RDF + Fe-EDTA 0.2% @ 30 and 45 DAS significantly improved growth characteristics viz plant height and DMP and the physiological parameters viz, SPAD value, CGR with higher grain yield (2891 kg ha-1), straw yield (5752 kg ha-1), biological yield (8643 kg ha-1) with higher B:C ratio. The same treatment combination recorded higher crop nutrient uptake and soil available nutrients with maximum NUE.