Vol. 11, Special Issue 11 (2022)

Author(s):
Sumayya, DS Waghdhare, SM Khan and AB Gosavi

Abstract:
The degradation of agricultural soils due to intensive agriculture practices is the leading cause of low organic matter, poor productivity, and diminished soil biodiversity. Entisols being minimally developed soils degrade easily though they are fertile. Entisols degrade rapidly despite being fertile. Therefore, chemical fertilizer use may not keep pace with time in soil health management for sustaining soil productivity. The most efficient way to increase natural supply of organic matter in soil is by growing and in-situ incorporation of suitable green manuring crops at the right growth stage. Better understanding of C evolution providing capability of a wide variety of green manures is important to design cost-effective and efficient C management approaches. Therefore, pot culture and incubation study was conducted for 75 days with seven treatments viz., sunhemp, cluster bean, cowpea, mutant dhaincha, green gram, soybean and control and these treatments were replicated thrice. Among different green manuring crops, the incorporation of mutant dhaincha recorded significantly higher values for CO₂-C evolution throughout the incubation period. The rate of CO₂-C release was slow at the beginning followed by a sharp increase, reaching the peak rate at 45 days of incubation followed by a gradual decline thereafter in all the soils amended with green manuring crops. The green manure incorporation also improvised the enzyme activities. The rate of enzyme activity (dehydrogenase and β-glucosidase) increased rapidly during beginning to 30 days and then increased slightly till 60 days of incubation period. Among all treatments, mutant dhaincha followed by sunhemp recorded higher values for dehydrogenase and β-glucosidase activity in soil throughout the incubation period.