No agriculture system can persist, if it fails to maintain soil fertility. In dryland soils or SAT soils Nitrogen is universally deficient, ‘P’ is low, and ‘K’ status is medium to high. The organic matter content of SAT soils is usually less than one per cent and hence is of low fertility status.
- Low rates of fertilizer application: vagaries of rainfall and consequent uncertainty of crop performance make farmers of dryland agriculture to avoid fertilizer application. However, results of experiments demonstrated yield advantage due to fertilizer use in dry land crop production. If the fertilizers are applied to meet the needs of the dryland crops, there may be prolonged breaks in the monsoon in kharif or limited available moisture in the root zone of rabi crops may be exhausted before the plants reach reproductive stage resulting in poor yields. On the other hand, if fertilizers are applied at rates below the optimum, the yields will be poor. This has to be avoided by assessing the yield potential of different regions and regulating the soil fertility levels by adding only such quantities of fertilizers as required for realizing the potential to the maximum extent possible. Hence fertilizer usage is more in irrigated agriculture than drylan agriculture.
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