Sustainable Intensification of Rice-Fallow Areas through Strategic Crop Selection and Fertilizer Management in Lower Indo-Gangetic Plains

In rainfed lowland rice ecosystem of eastern part of India, farmers generally sow various winter crops like lentil, lathyrus, chickpea field pea and linseed in the standing rice crop field just before the harvest of crop in order to utilize the post harvest soil moisture and nutrients. In this experiment the performance of utera crops was studied with fertilizers applied both in soil and foliar under rainfed rice ecosystem. The experiment was conducted with 3-main plot treatments consisting 3 utera crops viz. linseed, lentil and lathyrus; and 3 sub-plot treatments of fertilizer management viz. Suphala (NPK15:15:15) @ 150 kg ha-1 (22.5 kgNha-1), Di- ammonium phosphate (DAP: NP18:46) @ 125 kg ha-1 (22.5 kg N) applied on saturated rice soil as basal 4 days before seed sowing of utera crops and DAP spraying@ 2 g/lit of water at 20,40 and 60 days after sowing respectively.The results of experiment in the lowland rainfed rice ecosystem revealed that legumes crops like lathyrus and lentil recorded the higher yields than linseed utera crops. In the experiment, soil application of suphala (NPK15:15:15) @ 150 kg ha-1 gave the highest grain yield followed by DAP soil application; DAP foliar spray recorded least.The variation in crop growth and yield attributes of utera crops were also similar to the trends as noted in crop yields. The variation in built up soil fertility was noted by the utera crops specially legumes. The actual ET of utera crops were veried being the lowest ETa, whereas, linseed had maximum ETa value. Crop water use efficiency value was more in lathyrus and with suphala but least value was noted in linseed crop and with DAP foliar spray.The maximum benefit-cost ratio was obtained in lentil and DAP soil application. Based on the results of experiment, lathyrus, lentil and linseed may be grown as utera crops with the soil application of complex fertilizer suphala (NPK15:15:15) @ 150 kg ha-1in low land rice ecosystem of lower Indo-Gangetic Plains.