Abstract

Organic farming is essentially a soil-building mechanism to keep the soil ‘alive', make the soil ‘live' and sustain fertility. Balanced fertilization with organics, inorganics and biofertilizers have been proved beneficial in all the millet crops both under rainfed and irrigated conditions. Therefore, this investigation was carried out during Rabi, 2019–20 at farmers field in Pannandur village of Krishnagiri District, Tamil Nadu to evaluate the effect of organic manures (farmyard manure, poultry manure, fish waste, coir pith waste) and biofertilizer with 50% inorganic sources under irrigated condition in finger millet cv. CO 9. There were ten treatments involving T1-Control, T2-FYM @ 10 t/ha + Biofertilizer + 50% RDF, T3-Fish waste @ 2 t/ha + Biofertilizer + 50% RDF, T4-Poultry manure @ 2 t/ha + Biofertilizer + 50% RDF, T5-Coir pith waste @ 2 t/ha + Biofertilizer + 50% RDF, T6-T2 +Panchagavya 3% (foliar spray), T7-T3 + Panchagavya 3% (foliar spray), T8-T4 + Panchagavya 3% (foliar spray), T9-T5 + Panchagavya 3% (foliar spray), T10-Panchagavya @ 3% alone by adopting Randomized Block Design (RBD) which was replicated thrice. It was observed that significantly higher growth and yield components of finger millet viz., plant height (122.9 cm), dry matter production (12806.5 kg/ha) (at harvest stage), LAI (5.34) at flowering stage, number of productive earhead/m2 (125.17), number of fingers/earhead (9.4), thousand grain weight (3.0g) and grain yield (3766.7 kg/ha) were recorded with the application of poultry manure @ 2 t/ha + Biofertilizer + 50% RDF + Panchagavya 3% (foliar spray). Considering the above facts, it was evidenced that application of poultry manure @ 2 t/ha + Biofertilizer + 50% RDF + Panchagavya 3% (foliar spray) have increased the availability of nutrients, thereby increased the growth and yield attributes of finger millet. Also, use of organic manures and organic sprays and biofertilizers minimize cost of inorganic fertilizers, thereby act as a boom to farmers by making the waste into wealth and maintain the soil health and fertility.