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ARTICLE

The Enhancement of Soil Fertility, Dry Matter Transport and Accumulation, Nitrogen Uptake and Yield in Rice via Green Manuring

Tianyuan Li^1,#, Saif Ullah^1,#, He Liang¹, Izhar Ali¹, Quan Zhao¹, Anas Iqbal¹, Shanqing Wei¹, Tariq Shah², Yuqiong Luo¹, Ligeng Jiang^1,*

1 Key Laboratory of Crop Cultivation and Farming System, Guangxi University, Nanning, 530004, China
2 Department of Agronomy, The University of Agriculture Peshawar, Peshawar, 25130, Pakistan

# These authors contributed equally to this work.
* Corresponding Author: Ligeng Jiang. Email:

(This article belongs to the Special Issue: Plant Physiology for Crop Production and Sustainable Agriculture)

Phyton-International Journal of Experimental Botany 2021, 90(1), 223-243. https://doi.org/10.32604/phyton.2020.012065

Received 12 June 2020; Accepted 17 August 2020; Issue published 20 November 2020

Abstract

Readily available chemical fertilizers have resulted in a decline in the use of organic manure (e.g., green manures), a traditionally sustainable source of nutrients. Based on this, we applied urea at the rate of 270 kg ha⁻¹ with and without green manure in order to assess nitrogen (N) productivity in a double rice cropping system in 2017. In particular, treatment combinations were as follows: winter fallow rice-rice (WF-R-R), milk vetch rice-rice (MV-R-R), oil-seed rape rice-rice (R-R-R) and potato crop rice-rice (P-R-R). Results revealed that green manure significantly (p ≤ 0.05) improved the soil chemical properties and net soil organic carbon content increased by an average 117.47%, total nitrogen (N) by 28.41%, available N by 26.64%, total phosphorus (P) by 37.77%, available P by 20.48% and available potassium (K) by 33.10% than WF-R-R, however pH was reduced by 3.30% across the seasons. Similarly, net dry matter accumulation rate enhanced in green manure applied treatments and ranked in order: P-R-R > R-R-R > MV-R-R > WF-R-R. Furthermore, the total leaf dry matter transport (t ha⁻¹ ) for the P-R-R in both seasons was significantly higher by an average 11.2%, 7.2% and 36 % than MV-R-R, R-R-R, and WF-R-R, respectively. In addition, net total nitrogen accumulation (kg ha⁻¹ ) was found higher in green manure applied plots compared to the control. Yield and yield attributed traits were observed maximum in green manure applied plots, with treatments ranking as follows: P-R-R > R-R-R > MV-R-R > WF-R-R. Thus, results obtained highlight ability of green manure to sustainably improve soil quality and rice yield.

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