Performance of potato with organic mulches in Meghalaya

Abstract

Organic mulching is one of the important ingredients under natural farming, which ensures salubrious soil environment with respect to in-situ soil moisture and soil temperature and thereby resulting higher crop productivity. This practice is followed mostly during winter season to maintain soil moisture under different terrain. Potato is one of the important winter season crops of Meghalaya that faces water scarcity and thereby reduction in optimum yield. Under this scenario, the performance of potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) was assessed during 2021-22. Four different organic mulches, viz., M1 -no mulch M2 - paddy straw mulch, M3 - maize stubble mulch and M4 - weed mulch constituted as treatments and the experiment was replicated thrice. Irrigation was provided with different furrow irrigation system. Paddy straw mulch (M2 ) showed higher values for plant height, number of branches per plant, leaf area index (LAI), number of tubers per plant, weight of tubers per plant (g), tuber yield (t ha-1 ). Paddy straw mulch registered the highest tuber yield (17.15 t ha-1 ) which was found at par with M4 (16.66 t ha-1 ), the lowest yield was reported in no-much treatment (12.24 t ha-1 ) followed by treatment under maize stubble mulch (14.96 t ha-1 ). Similarly, the maximum field water use efficiency (WUE) was recorded for M2 (47.49 kg ha-1mm -1 ) over M1 (33.91 kg ha-1 mm -1 ) and M3 (41.62 kg ha-1 mm -1 ), but it was at par with M4 (46.62 kg ha-1 mm -1 ). Maximum gross return (Rs. 2, 57,177.78 ha-1 ), net return (Rs.1, 54, 582.82 ha-1 ) and BCR (2.50) were reported highest in M2 over M1 , M3 and it was found to be at par with M4 .