Ashik Jamil Mahmud
Department of Soil Science, Faculty of Agriculture, Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University, Sher-e-Bangla Nagar, Dhaka-1207, Bangladesh
A. T. M. Shamsuddoha
Department of Soil Science, Faculty of Agriculture, Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University, Sher-e-Bangla Nagar, Dhaka-1207, Bangladesh
Md. Nazmul Haque
Department of Agronomy, Faculty of Agriculture, Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University, Sher-e-Bangla Nagar, Dhaka-1207, Bangladesh
Grain yield; NPKS fertilizer; Organic fertilizer; Rice; Vermicompost
Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Crop-Soil-Water Management
Fertilizer and manures, Rice
Experimental location, soil and climate The study was carried out at Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University, Dhaka, Bangladesh situated at 23046' N latitude and 90023' E longitude at an altitude of 8.45m above the sea level during the period from December 2013 to June 2014. The soil of the experimental soil was silty clay loam in texture with sand (17.60 %), silt (47.40 %), clay (35.00 %), soil pH (5.70), organic carbon (0.89 %), total N (0.063 %), available P (14.90 mg kg-1soil), exchangeable K (0.12 meq/100 g soil) and available S (11.00 mg kg-1).The climate of this area is subtropical. 2.2 Planting Material A rice variety called BRRI dhan29 was used as a test crop. This variety was developed at the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI) from the cross between BG 90-2 and BR51-46-5 in 1994. It is recommended for boro season. 2.3 Raising and transplanting of seedling The seedlings of rice were raised in the wet bed methods. The selected seed bed was opened by hand spade on 25th November 2013. Seeds (95% germinated) 5 kg ha-1 were soaked and incubated for 48 hours. 30 days old seedlings were carefully uprooted from the seedling nursery and transplanted on 19th January 2014. Two seedlings per hill were used following a line to line of 20 cm and hill to hill spacing of 15 cm. After one week of transplantation all plots were checked for any missing hill which was filled in with extra seedlings whenever required. 2.4 Land preparation First the land was ploughed with a power tiller. The soil was saturated with adequate supply of irrigation water and finally prepared by successive ploughing and cross ploughing followed by laddering. The unexpected residues were removed from the experimental plot. Finally, the land was leveled and the experimental plot was partitioned into unit plots in accordance with experimental design. 2.5 Experimental design and treatment The experiment was arranged in Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with three replications. The experiment consists of two Factors i.e. 4 levels of vermicompost viz.,V0=0 t ha-1 (control), V1=1 t ha-1, V2=2 t ha-1, V3=4 t ha-1 and 4 levels of chemical fertilizers viz., F0 = control ( 0-0-0-0 kg N, P, K, S ha-1, respectively), F1= low level (50-8-33-6 kg N, P, K, S ha-1, respectively), F2 = medium level (100-16-66-12 kg N, P, K, S ha-1, respectively), F3 = high level (150-24-99-18 kg N, P, K, S ha-1, respectively). The plants without treatments were served as control. The size of the plot was 2 m ×2 m (4 m2). The distance maintained between two plots was 0.5 m and between blocks was 1 m.Vermicompost contains 48 % C, 2.99 % N, 0.28 % P, 1.65 % K, 0.32 % S, C:N ratio 15. 2.6 Biological yield Biological yield was calculated by using the following formula: Biological yield= Grain yield + straw yield 2.7 Harvest index (%)Harvest index is the relationship between grain yield and biological yield. It was calculated by using the following formula: HI (%) =Grain Yield/ Biological Yield x 100.
2.8 Statistical analysis The data were statistically analyzed by using MSTAT-C (Russell, 1994) programme. The mean differences among the treatments were compared by least significant difference (LSD) test at 5% level of significance.
Nature and Science 2016;14(2)http://www.sciencepub.net/nature
Journal