Effect of microbial consortia on growth and yield of wheat under typic haplustepts

The uses of environment friendly biological fertilizers to improve plant growth and crop productivity are of great importance for soil health and sustainable agriculture. Hence, an experiment was conducted in two successive rabi seasons of 2017-18 and 2018-19 to analyze the impact of microbial consortium (combination of local strains of Azotobacter, phosphorus solubilizing bacteria, potassium mobilizing bacteria and zinc solubilizing bacteria) and inorganic fertilizers on growth, yield and economics of wheat. The experiment consisting twelve treatment combinations and different levels of inorganic fertilizers along with biofertilizer consortia replicated three times in randomized block design. The results emanated from present investigation revealed that plant height, plant biomass, root length, chlorophyll content in leaves at different growth stages of wheat crop was influenced by biofertilizer + RDF treatment combinations. The maximum yield attributes viz. effective tillers (85.67 m row length), ear length (16.46 and 11.10 cm with awns and without awns, respectively), test weight (57.12 g), number of spikelet ear(-1) (86.67) were obtained under biofertilizer consortia 2 with 100% RDF which was statistically higher over control. This increasing trend in yield attributes resulted higher grain (54.83 q ha(-1)), straw (79.26 q ha(-1)), biological yield (134.09 q ha(-1)) and harvest index (40.92%) in superior treatment combination i.e. biofertilizer consortia 2 with 100% RDF, ultimately obtained the utmost monetary return in terms of net return (Rs 97,893 ha(-1)) and B-C ratio (2.66).