Improvement in Productivity and Economics of Major Food Production Systems of India through Balanced Dose of Nutrients

Increasing the nutrient use efficiency in major food production systems has always been a major concern because of escalating costs of production of crops, especially with regard to nutrient management. 'Researcher-designed farmer managed trials' were conducted during 2013-14 through farmer participatory research covering the major food production systems in India. A total of 144 trials in rice-rice, 156 in rice-wheat, 48 in rice-green gram and 60 in maize-wheat systems were conducted with 7 treatments. Across the various National Agricultural Research Project zones and cropping systems, farmers applied 29%, 25%, 71% and 100% lower level of N, P₂O₅, K₂O and micronutrients respectively, than the recommended dose. Application of recommended dose of NPK + deficient micronutrients in all the systems recorded higher yield over farmer package. Balanced application of recommended NPK + deficit micronutrients gave additional yield. The increase in agronomic efficiency (AE) of nitrogen (two times on an average), phosphorus (45%) and potassium (60%), partial factor productivity and relative response was also observed with the balanced application compared to N, NP and NK alone. Higher increase of AE of N and P was observed in rice-rice system while AE of K was observed in rice-wheat system. Increase in net returns was found to be 24.9%, 63.3%, 27.4% and 92.2% with the application of NPK + deficient micronutrients over farmer practice in rice-rice, rice-wheat, rice-green gram and maize-wheat systems respectively, whereas the increase in cost of cultivation due to addition of P, K and micronutrients was found to be only 4.8%, 7.3%, 13.0% and 17.9% for the respective systems.