Achieving Yield Sustainability in Small Millets Through Liquid Microbial Consortia-An Eco-friendly Approach

Actually, the millets are grown organically/no manures are applied even under low fertile soils resulted in poor millet production levels and leading to higher price of millets. Hence, there is need for low cost and eco-friendly technologies for getting higher productivity and sustaining the soil health.

The field experiment was conducted to investigate the benefits of liquid microbial consortia and their mode of application on small millets (Proso, Little and Barnyard millet, respectively) at Zonal Agricultural Research Station, V. C. Farm, Mandya from kharif, 2020 to kharif 2022. The experimental design followed was randomized complete block design with three replications using the recommended dose of fertilizers (RDF) at various levels (100%, 85% and 70% RDF, respectively) with different mode of application of liquid microbial consortia as seed treatment, soil application and combination of both.

The highest grain and straw yield was realized with treatment receiving 100% RDF+Seed treatment with liquid microbial consortia (5 ml kg^-1 seed) followed by soil application of liquid microbial consortia (6.25 litres/ha) mixed with 500 kg farmyard manure (FYM) and applied in furrows during sowing as compared to 100% RDF alone. This might be due to the better growth and yield parameters. The nutrient uptake by grain and straw and microbial population and available soil nutrients at harvest and B:C ratio also followed the similar trend as in case of grain and straw yield.