Influence of radish as cover crop and vegetable cropping system on crop productivity and soil health of sandy soil of Gossaigaon Assam

Abstract

The present investigation entitled Influence of radish as cover crop and vegetable cropping system on crop productivity and soil health of sandy soil of Gossaigaon, Assam was carried out during Rabi season of 2017-18 and 2018-19 and Summer season of 2017-18 and 2018-19 at KrishiVigyan Kendra (KVK) farm of Kokrajhar district under Lower Brahmaputra Valley Zone (LBVZ) of Assam State. The soil of experimental site was sandy loam in texture with strongly acidic soil reaction, with low EC, CEC, high bulk density, particle density, low in organic carbon, low in available nitrogen medium in phosphorus and low in potassium. The treatment details were: cover crop (CC) ,followed by CS-I (okra followed by bitter gourd), CS-II (chilli followed by dolichos bean) and cropping system-III (cowpea followed by amaranthus). The experiment was laid out in randomized block design (RBD). Forage radish CC was sown during 10th October, 2017-18 and 15th October, 2018-19 with seven replications, 100 % CC (30cm x 30cm), 75% CC (45cm x 30cm) and 50 % CC at 60cm x 30cm, respectively. At young, decomposable harvesting maturity (60DAS), the CC was incorporated in the soil manually in all the plots. After one month of CC incorporation vegetable crops viz., Orka, chilli and cowpea were sown/transplanted during January, 2018 and 2019 with five replications. Vegetable crop biomasses were also incorporated in soil after harvest and followed by the second vegetable crops viz., bitter gourd, dolichos bean and amaranthus, respectively in respective vegetable sequence(s). The influence of cover crop and crop biomasses on soil chemical and physical parameters were studied at different sampling depths for both years. Soil chemical and physical parameters after incorporation of forage radish cover crop recorded significant improvements over control. Most of the growth parameters, yield attributes and yield of vegetable crops, soil chemical parameters (EC, CEC, available NPK, organic carbon, organic matter and C/N ratio), soil physical attributes viz., ...