Integrated nutrient management in jute (Corchorus sp) based cropping system: A review

Abstract

Jute (Corchorus sp) is the single most economically and socially important commercial crop for the livelihood of 40 lakh small and marginal farm families of eastern Indian states like West Bengal, Assam, Bihar, Odisha, Meghalaya and Tripura. Farmers were not following appropriate nutrient management practices for the crop due to lack of awareness and to some extent for theire conomic inability to provide required inputs to the crop. However, gradually jute farmers are gaining knowledge in this regard and started using fertilizers for jute. For the last five decades and more, sufficient research and developmental work of nutrient management for jute were undertaken. But there was scanty effort to summarize the work on nutrient management of jute for the benefit of the farmers as well as researcher and extension personnel. Therefore, this review documented the research and development work efforts on nutrient management in jute over a period of about 50 years (1967–2017).The paper discussed about nutrient requirement for jute, work on N, P, K, S need and fertilizer schedule, role and rate of micronutrients like Zn and B, nutrient management in jute based cropping system, findings of long term fertilizer experiment (LTFE) in jute based crop rotation, soil test crop response (STCR) results and equations for jute based cropping system, soil microbial studies related to nutrient management of jute.