Agronomic, economic, social and environmental benefits of improved nutrient management practices in maize production systems under variable farm size, climate, soil fertility conditions and farmer resource endowment in Telangana, India.
A study was undertaken with the scientists of PJTSAU considering the following objectives. 1. To determine farmer typologies through implementation of rapid rural surveys in maize growing ecologies of Telangana. 2. To determine the impact of farmer resource availability on native soil fertility in variable maize growing environment 3. To determine the agronomic and economic impact of nutrient management in smallholder maize systems under contrasting tillage situations using ex-ante and on-farm assessment using Nutrient Expert 4. To provide options for maize intensification in different farmer typologies through Nutrient Expert based Site Specific Nutrient Management strategies 5. To train NARS, NAES, and industry partners in the application of NE to develop site-specific precision nutrient management recommendations suitable for all farm typologies in the study domain.
IPNI-2015-IND-532
2016 Annual Interpretive Summary
The farm typology-based fertilizer recommendations allows a group of farmers belonging to a particular farm type to be eligible for the same recommendations for similar farm operations. The study on delineation of farm typology in the predominant maize growing areas of Telangana was initiated to compare the agronomic and economic performance of farm typology-based fertilizer recommendations using Nutrient Expert® (NE) with that of state recommendation (SR), soil test crop response (STCR), and farmer fertilizer practice (FFP).
A rapid rural survey (RRS) was conducted in two established (Karimnagar and Medak) and two emerging (Nizamabad and Mahabubnagar) maize-growing districts of Telangana. Three predominantly maize-growing villages were chosen in each of the selected districts, based on the information obtained from the Department of Agriculture. Fifteen farmers from each village were interviewed on socio-economic status, farm profile, farm asset inventory, crop management practices, tillage conditions, maize production problems, soil and water resources use, etc. Based on the survey, farmers were categorized under different typology groups, and 10 farmers from each of the districts were selected to evaluate the farm typology-based fertilizer recommendations developed using NE. Field experiments were conducted during 2016 in selected farmer fields with four treatments, comparing NE based fertilizer recommendation with that of FFP, SR, and STCR.
NE-based fertilizer recommendations produced comparable grain yield (7.2 t/ha) as with SR (7.2 t/ha), STCR (7.3 t/ha), and FFP (7.1 t/ha) in Nizamabad district. However, the total nutrient (N+P2O5+K2O) application rate in the NE treatment was 235 kg/ha, which was 24, 39, and 33% lower than the nutrient application rates of SR, STCR, and FFP, respectively. This resulted in high partial factor productivity of nutrient use in NE (30.6 kg yield/kg nutrient) as compared to SR (23.2 kg yield/kg nutrient), STCR (18.9 kg yield/kg nutrient), and FFP (20.3 kg yield/kg nutrient). In Mahabubnagar district, little rainfall in the maize season caused crop failure. The performance of farm typology-based fertilizer recommendations using NE did not show any definite trend over the other nutrient management options in the other maize-growing districts. The study was financially supported by CIMMYT and concluded in 2016 .