Impact of green manuring on rice yield, zinc and sulphur uptake

A green house experiment was conducted with two Zn and S deficient soils with rice as the test crop to study the effect of green manuring with Sesbania aculeata and two sources of zinc (ZnSO₄ and Zn-EDTA @ 5 kg Zn ha⁻¹) and S (gypsum @ 50 kg S ha⁻¹) on yield and Zn and S uptake. Application of recommended dose of NPK (100:50:50 NPK kg ha⁻¹), Zn as ZnSO₄ and S as gypsum coupled with green manuring resulted in significantly higher grain yield (43.1 g pot⁻¹). The uptake of Zn and S increased significantly with the application of GM in addition to improvement of soil fertility.