Performance of liquid microbial consortium on bhendi (COBH-1) under precision farming system

Carrier based microbial inoculants are widely used in conventional agriculture to improve crop growth and yield. Precision farming is a site specific management approach whereas the conventional practice is a uniform fertilizer application. Carrier based inoculum is not suitable for precision farming system due to clogging effect. Hence the liquid microbial consortium was developed using three inoculants viz., Azospirillum brasilense sp 7, Bacillus megaterium var. phosphaticum and Pseudomonas fluorescens with suitable cell protectant i.e. 10mM of phosphate buffer with 10% glycerol. We conducted a field experiment to study the effect of biofertigation on plant growth under precision farming system in bhendi (COBH 1). The result suggested the positive influence of 75% RDF of NPK + Microbial consortium application with single time (60 lit/ha) on delivery of inoculants viz., Azospirillum (5.96 ± 0.12 log cells/ml), Bacillus megaterium var. phosphoticum(7.00 ± 0.12 ml log cells/ml) and Pseudomonas (7.30 ± 0.02 log cells/ml) on plant growth and 10% increase in yield over conventional method.