Nutrient Status and Soil Health after Harvest of Rice, as Influenced by the Application of Organic and Inorganic Sources of Plant Nutrient

A field experiment conducted during the 2023 kharif season at Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh, India, examined rice yield, plant nutrient uptake and selected post-harvest soil chemical properties under eight nutrient-management treatments arranged in a randomised block design with three replications. Treatments comprised an unfertilised control, 100% recommended mineral fertiliser dose (RDF) and combinations of 50% recommended nitrogen dose (RDN) with foliar slurry, cow-urine or vermiwash applications. The greatest recorded grain and straw yields occurred under 50% RDN plus slurry sprays at 30, 60 and 90 days after transplanting (T5; 46.93 and 63.66 q ha−1, respectively), compared with 46.50 and 62.26 q ha−1 under 100% RDF (T2). The untreated control yielded 20.13 and 32.33 q ha−1. Post-harvest soil available nitrogen, P2O5 and K2O were numerically greatest under T2 (216.36, 13.32 and 286.32 kg ha−1), rather than T5 (201.14, 12.16 and 259.12 kg ha−1). T5 showed the highest recorded grain nitrogen uptake (59.13 kg ha−1) and straw potassium uptake (108.23 kg ha−1). The treatment means for soil pH, electrical conductivity and organic carbon varied over narrow ranges, with no established treatment differences in the reported experiment. These observations suggest that repeated slurry foliar applications combined with reduced mineral nitrogen coincided with a high rice yield in this setting, whereas the full mineral fertiliser treatment maintained the highest measured residual soil macronutrient availability. Interpretation is necessarily descriptive because independently verifiable plot-level variation and complete liquid-input characterisation are unavailable.