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PRINT ISSN : 2319-7692
Online ISSN : 2319-7706 Issues : 12 per year Publisher : Excellent Publishers Email : editorijcmas@gmail.com / submit@ijcmas.com Editor-in-chief: Dr.M.Prakash Index Copernicus ICV 2018: 95.39 NAAS RATING 2020: 5.38 |
Banana is a highly exhaustive crop which requires large quantities of mineral nutrients for rapid growth and development, thus it readily responds to applied nutrients. Major nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium play an important role in the vegetative and reproductive phases of crop growth, depending on the cultivar. In general, the input use efficiency of various nutrients used for crop growth and development is currently very low leading to problems of decreased productivity, degradation of soil health and increased environmental pollution apart from the wastage of substantial quantity of costly and scarce inputs. Increasing the efficiency of water and fertilizer can itself go a long way in realizing the growing demand for food and other plant products. These multiple requirements led to adoption of fertigation, which very much improves the nutrient uptake efficiency to an extent of 30-40 per cent, prevents soil degradation, reduces the cost of fertilizer and application besides improving the productivity and quality of the produce. Fertigation also minimizes the pollution of ground water by preventing losses through run off and Leaching. The fertigation results in saving water consumption to an extent of 40-70 per cent and fertilizer use to 25 per cent. The fertilizer application should contain more of potassium and nitrogen. Similarly, the choice and dosage of nutrients, time, mode and frequency of application vary depending on the cultivars, initial soil fertility, the production system and agro climatic conditions. Banana requires heavy manuring near by the soil surface because of its shallow rooting nature. Most of the researchers suggested weekly fertigation with water soluble fertilizers for higher productivity.