Integrated Nutrient Management in Plantation Crops
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Date
2002
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Abstract
Plantation crops are generally grown on resource poor soils. Unlike annual crops mismanaged perennial crops may never achieve the full production potential with very significant yield reductions and disastrous economic consequences. Plantation crops are managed to get a variety of produces, for e.g., from buds and leaves of tea, berries of coffee, latex of rubber and nuts of coconut palm. Fertilizer management in perennial crops is a continuous battle against soil limiting factors, varying nutrient demands in different stages of their growth. Out of the nutrient requirement of plantation crops viz., 0.43 million tons of nitrogen, 0.24 million tons of P20, and 0.62 millions tons of K,O only 22 per cent is met through use of fertilizers.The huge amounts of crops residues containing appreciable quantity of nutrients produced by plantation crops are often not recycled into the system in a systematic manner.The potential of the nutrients in recycling of biomass generated in coconut, oil palm, arecanut, cocoa and coffee systems has been elaborated as 91740 t N, 11890 t P20,, 62700 t K20 for 2000 AD and a five-fold increase during 2025 AD.These organic forms of nutrients can improve soil health through their effect on soil physic0 chemical properties and microbial flora. Nevertheless, use of chemical fertilizers is the easiest way of boosting crops yield. However, its cost, government policies and environmental problems associated with it fear of low yields when not applied in balanced proportions deter the farmers from resorting the regular fertilizer application. Considering the behaviour of microbes, lignin-rich nature of the planting material, rate and extent of decomposition, it is necessary that techniques of composing the biomass and recycling by practicing integrated nutrient management assume significance. In fact INM is the key for nutrient management in plantation crops based systems. There is a need to develop integrated production systems for each of the plantation crops. For tree crops, farming system is the best option for the INM. For each of the plantation crops an inventory of the resources available in the system, their characterisation and behaviour in soil has to be documented. The importance of secondary micronutrients and the INM methods through which these can be enriched in the soil needs investigation. WTO regime has opened up many challenges for plantation crops sector.To produce more and compete globally we need to guard the productivity potential of soil. INM offers many avenues in this direction. Besides the above is a need for a sound extension policy to propagate the benefit of INM in plantation crops systems.
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Plantation Crops Research and Development in the New Millennium (2002): 9-22