DefinePK

Abstract

Cereal are the main staple food of many Asian countries including Pakistan, so their demand is increasing day by day. Use of high cost fertilizers in order to attain the required production levels has become compulsion for farmers. Under such scenario achieving higher productivity with minimum input cost is the main goal of today’s farming community. In order to find out the possible way to obtain maximum return from the soil with lowest cost, field experiments were conducted to test the IPNI-nutrient expert model for wheat on farmers’ field during the year 2017 to 2020 in different climatic zones of Punjab, Pakistan. The experiment was conducted in Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD). There were five treatments including control (no fertilizer), Farmer Practice (FP), NPK at half and full recommended dosages and Nutrient Expert dose (NE) with three replications. The results ascertained that the highest wheat grain yield (5084 kg ha-1) was obtained with NE followed by recommended dose of NPK (4851 kg ha-1) in cotton zone, however in all other zones recommended dose of NPK gave maximum yield followed by NE. In terms of net revenue obtained, NE performed best amongst the treatments applied. The results of the experiment suggested that use of advance models (like IPNI nutrient expert model) for site specific nutrient recommendations can give higher productivity with maximum economic efficiency in comparison to farmers own conventional practices.