Nutrients Content, Uptake and Soil Biological Properties as Influenced by Various Nutrient Management Practices under Fodder Pearl Millet Cultivation

The experiment was conducted during kharif season of 2019–20 at Agronomy research farm, ICAR-NDRI, Karnal (Haryana) with eight treatments including recommended dose of fertiliser (80:30:30 kg/ha, N: P₂ O₅: K₂ O, respectively) in combinations with plant growth promoting Rhizobacteria (PGPR) as seed treatment and cow urine foliar spray (10%). The nutrients content and uptake by fodder pearl millet significantly affected with different nutrient management practices and maximum nitrogen (1.57%), phosphorus (0.27%) and potassium (1.66%) contents as well as uptake of nitrogen (177.40 kg ha⁻¹), phosphorus (30.62 kg ha⁻¹) and potassium (188.56 kg ha⁻¹) was recorded with100% RDF + PGPR + Cow urine foliar spray, which was statistically at par with 100% RDF + PGPR. Maximum microbial biomass carbon (163.47 and 192.44 μg/g dry soil), dehydrogenase activities (13.25 and 23.83 μg TPF/g soil/day), alkaline phosphatase activities (84.55 and 106.96 μg PNP/g soil/hr.), bacterial counts (14.46×10⁶ and 22.09×10⁶ CFU/g soil), actinomycetes counts (26.40×10⁵ and 37.15×10⁵ CFU/g soil) and fungal counts (14.07×10⁴ and 18.85×10⁴ CFU/g soil) at 40 DAS and harvest in 100% RDF + PGPR + cow urine foliar spray, which wasstatistically at par with 100% RDF + PGPR followed by 75% RDF + PGPR + cow urine foliar spray and 75% RDF + PGPR at 40 DAS, while at harvest it was found at par with 100% RDF + PGPR and both were found significantly higher over rest of the treatments.