Agricultural Reviews

Agriculture sustainability depends on production of crops without hampering natural systems and thus, suggests for eco-friendly approaches to achieve this. Weed, being a major problem in agriculture causes reduction in crop yield and depletes soil nutrients. Although application of inorganic fertilizers or herbicides improves crop yield to an extent, it hampers soil health and environment through toxic substances. In this context, brown manuring, an organic/eco-friendly approach holds good prospect, specially in direct seeded rice. Reviewed research reports clearly explained the benefits of brown manuring in suppression of weeds, sequestration of carbon, biological nitrogen fixation, addition of macro and micro nutrients to soil, saving soil moisture, improving physical, chemical and biological properties of soil etc. As a consequence, various research works reported improvement in crop growth, yield and economic return of rice, maize, sugarcane etc. However, research gap is still present in this regard and therefore, multi-locational, multi-season, multi-crop trials using different brown manure plants at different rates and time of co-culture are needed at this hour to confirm the efficacy of brown manuring for future recommendation. Besides, strong extension service is needed further to transfuse this eco-friendly approach to grass-root level of farming community.