Fortification of Organic Manures with Iron on Nutrient Release Characteristics

Aims: The objective of current study was to examine the nutrient release pattern by enriching different organic manures with iron fertilizer at different ratios in regular sampling intervals.

Study Design: The design used in this current study was Factorial completely randomized block design with six treatments replicated thrice.

Place and Duration of Study: An incubation experiment was carried out in the Department of Soil Science and Agricultural Chemistry, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, India during December - March 2022.

Methodology: An incubation experiment was carried out by enriching inorganic iron fertilizer with three different organics such as FYM, vermicompost and biocompost in two ratios viz., 1:5 and 1:10 at four different sampling intervals 7, 14, 21 and 28 days after incubation and analyzed for various physical and chemical properties to study the iron release pattern.

Results: The results revealed that the iron content ranged from 5324 to 8823 mg kg-1. Among all the combinations, the highest nutrient release was found in FeSo4 enriched with vermicompost 1:10 ratio at 21 DAI which is followed by FeSo4 enriched with FYM 1:10 ratio.

Conclusion: The present study revealed that the integrated application of organic and inorganic fertilizer significantly improved the iron use efficiency. Only a few work were reported on integrated application of micronutrient at different organic fertilizer rates, however need further studies to validate the reliability.