Response of Phosphorus on Growth and Yield of Pearl Millet, Microbial Population and System Productivity in Pearl Millet Based Cropping Systems

The present study evaluated the use of various phosphorus management practices with and without PSB on pearl millet and its residual effect on succeeding pulse crops like green gram, blackgram and chickpea. It was conducted at agricultural college farm, Bapatla during both kharif and rabi seasons of 2017-18 and 2018-19. The treatments consisted of T1: No Phosphorus, T2: 50% RDP T3: 75% RDP, T4: 100% RDP, T5: 50% RDP + seed inoculation with PSB, T6 :75% RDP + seed inoculation with PSB, T7 : 100% RDP + seed inoculation with PSB in RBD design with three replications in kharif pearl millet crop. The results indicated that, the treatment T7 (100% RDP + seed inoculation with PSB) recorded significantly the highest growth parameters like LAI, CGR, RGR and NAR at different phenological stages of crop growth period and yield of pearl millet (2996 kg ha-1 and 2876 kg ha-1 during 2017 and 2018 respectively) and it was at par with T4 (100% RDP). Similarly, the total fungi, bacteria and rhizobium counts were increased with increase in fertilizer level and PSB treated plots (T7, T6 and T5) when compared to un-inoculated PSB plots (T4, T3 and T2). The highest number of bacteria (46.2 and 49.2 cfu per gram soil), fungi (25.4 and 24.4 cfu per gram soil) and rhizobium (33.5 and 34.4cfu per gram soil) was found in the treatment T7 (100% RDP+ seed inoculation with PSB) during 2017-18 and 2018-19, respectively. Among the different kharif residual treatments, the highest pearl millet equivalent yield of rabi crops was recorded with residual effect of 100 % RDP + PSB (M7).