Soybean herbage yield, nutritional value and profitability under integrated manures management

Organic manures are more preferred and environmentally friendly than chemical fertilizers for minimally contaminating soil, water and environmental resources, but the determination of right source of organic manures continues to remain an unexplored aspect. Considering the important issue, a multi-year field trial was carried out to determine the response of forage soybean to four sources of nutrients such as chemical fertilizers (IF), poultry litter (PL), bovine's farm yard slurry (BFYS) and sewage sludge (SS) and their seven binary combinations (PL+BFYS, PL+SS, PL+IF, BFYS+SS, BFYS+IF, SS+IF and PL+BFYS+SS). Supplementation of organic manures with mineral fertilizers remained superior to their sole application, particularly BFYS + IF was found significantly (p≤0.05) superior for yielding the highest fresh biomass (23.9, 26.4 and 25.7 t ha-1) with improved nutritional quality. The same combination of integrated fertilizer management also recorded higher sustainability as per sustainable forage yield index along with the highest net income and the benefit-cost ratio. PL and SS applied in conjunction with IF performed better than sole or binary application of organic manures. Therefore, BFYS + IF may be recommended for adoption to produce comparable forage yield and nutritional quality of soybean along with reducing dependency on chemical fertilizers.