Long-term fertilizer experiments are found to be excellent experimental material to study impact of nutrient on crop productivity, soil processes, carbon sequestration, soil organic matter dynamics, nutrient cycling etc. Compilation of long-term data (yield, soil properties, nutrient budgets etc.) allows evaluation of soil use systems over a period of time. These management practices can be tested for their ecological impacts with computer models and impact of climate change on productivity and soil health. Thus, these experiments offer an excellent opportunity to identify soil indicators for assessing soil quality, which are sensitive to management practices. Systematic information on change in soil and productivity are available which can be used to develop model for assessing impact of climate change on crop productivity, soil health and future prediction. The information generated will help to cope up with weather vagaries and to develop strategies for sustaining the system. Thus, the thrust area for next three years would focus on:
- Impact of climate change on ecological services of soil, soil processes is-a-vis crop productivity
- Study on dynamics on microbial functional diversity
- Assessing the soil carbon turnover to know the impact of climate change
- Developing data base by using the existing data over the years through models viz., P buildup, yield sustainability and soil productivity. Moreover, there is an urgent need to update Information System on Long Term Fertilizer Experiment (ISLTFE) with the new data that would be generated in the future by the cooperating centres.
Targets for the next three years (2017-20)
The focus of AICRP LTFE shall be on;
- To study impact of changing climate on crop productivity
- Assessment of nutrient management on soil microbial functional diversity
- Identification of management practices for carbon sequestration
- To identify soil quality indicators and also soil health indicators for each soil type