Effect of integrated nutrient management on growth and yield of summer maize (Zea mays)

Abstract

A field experiment was carried out at Instructional Cum-Research Farm (ICR) of Assam Agricultural University, Jorhat during the year 2019 to find out the effect of INM practices to growth and yield of summer maize. The experiment was laid out in randomized block design with nine treatments and replicated thrice. The soil of the experimental site was sandy loam in texture, acidic in reaction, medium in organic carbon (0.72), low in available N (156.19 kg/ha) and medium in available P2O5 (23.78 kg/ha) and K2O (161.50 kg/ha). The maize seed of the variety VMH-53 was sown on 15th of March (2019) and harvested by two pickings on 10th June and 15th June. Experimental findings revealed that growth attributing characters like plant height, number of leaves per plant, leaf area index as well as various yield attributing characters viz., weight of cob with and without husk, length of cob, number of rows/cob, grains/row, grains/cob, 1000 grain weight, weight of grain per cob was recorded highest under the treatment T3 containing 100% RDF + Azospirillum + PSB + 2 sprays of vermiwash at 25 & 40 DAS which was at par with 75% RDF + 25% of N replaced by vermicompost + Azospirillum + PSB + 2 sprays of vermiwash at 25 & 40 DAS. The highest grain and stover yield being 43.04 q/ha and 89.66 q/ha respectively was produced from RDF + Azospirillum + PSB + 2 sprays of vermiwash at 25 & 40 DAS (T3) which was at par with the grain yield 41.81 q/ha and stover yield 87.42 q/ha obtained from 75% N of RDF + 25% of N replaced by vermicompost + Azospirillum + PSB + 2 sprays of vermiwash at 25&40 DAS (T6).