Development and evaluation of soil-test-based fertilizer tailoring equations for Ney Poovan and Nendran bananas

In the year 2020, India has to produce 50 million tons of banana to cater the needs of exploding population and for export purposes. Banana production systems at the current level of yields are not found to be sustainable, in the long run, as there is significant depletion of plant nutrients in soil and imbalanced fertilization. High yielding, fertilizer responsive varieties of banana and high cost of fertilizers have necessitated the development of a quantitative basis for making fertilizer recommendations according to soil fertility status of field for obtaining economic yield of banana. Therefore, soil test crop response study based on soil fertility gradient approach was carried out on two important commercial varieties of banana (Ney Poovan and Nendran), fertilizer tailoring (adjustment) equations and related computer packages were developed and they were evaluated in the farmers’ fields. Evaluation of these equations revealed application of 255:35:459 g in Ney Poovan banana and 225:58:503 g N: P₂O₅:K₂O/plant for the yield targets, 38 t/ha and 34 t/ha, respectively were found to be optimum for sustainable soil health.