Effect of farm yard manure on soil properties in maize-wheat system

A field experiment was conducted during 2001–02 and 2002–03 (on already in progress experiment since kharif 1996) to study the organic, integrated and pure chemical fertilizers as a source of nutrition on soil health in maize-wheat sequence. Organic farming system resulted in positive influx of nutrients as indicated by more organic carbon content (0.821 to 0.992%), available nitrogen (201.1 to 235.4 kg/ha), available phosphorus (45.4 to 51.4 kg/ha) and available potash (168.8 to 187.8 kg/ha). Organic source of nutrition helped to improve mineralizable nitrogen, labile C, microbial biomass, dehydrogenase and phosphatase activity. The apparent P and K balance was found positive for organic farming treatments ranging from 43.2 to 110.1 kg P/ha/year and 3.1 to 135.2 kg K/ha/year.