Impact of Organic Farming on Yield and Quality of BASMATI Rice and Soil Properties

The management of soil organic matter is critical to maintain a productive organic farming system. No one source of nutrient usually suffices to maintain productivity and quality control in organic system. In addition, the inputs to supplement nutrient avail-ability are often not uniform presenting additional challenges in meeting the nutrient requirement of crops in organic systems. With this concept, a field experiment was conducted at the research farm of Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, India during 2003-06 in rice-wheat-green gram cropping system. In this experiment, different treatments comprising organic amendments such as Blue Green Algae (BGA) 15kg/ha, Azolla 1.0 tonne/ha, Vermicompost and Farm Yard Manure (FYM) 5.0 tonne/ha each applied alone or in combination were tested in organic crop production. These treatments were compared with absolute control (N0P0K0) and recommended dose of chemical fertilizer (N80P40K40). In wheat crop Azotobacter replaced Azolla, but other treatments remained same. For rice, a scented variety ‘Pusa Basmati 1’ and for wheat and green gram HYVs were taken. Biomass of green gram was incorporated in soil after picking of pods and wheat was sown using zero tillage practice. The obser-vations on grain yield, contents of Fe, Zn, Mn and Cu in rice grains, insect pest inci-dence, soil nutrients and microbial activity were taken. Results revealed a significant enhancement in grain yield of rice over absolute control due to the application of different organic amendments applied alone or in combina-tions. Rice grain yield increased by 114 to 116.8% over absolute control when all the 4 organic amendments were applied altogether. The rice grain yield (4.0 t ha-1) obtained under combined application of four organic amendments was at par with the yield recorded under recommended dose of chemical fertilizer application. An interesting observation recorded was that there was no serious attack of any insect pest or dis-ease in organically grown crop. Soil microbial population (Actinomycetes, Bacteria, Fungi and BGA) enhanced due to the application of organic amendments in compari-son to absolute control as well as recommended fertilizer application that in turn re-sulted in a notable enhancement in soil dehydrogenase and phosphatase enzyme activity. Soil organic carbon and available phosphorus contents were also found to be significantly increased due to organic farming practice over control as well as chemical fertilizer application. Rice grain analysis for nutrients viz. Fe, Zn, Mn and Cu showed a significant increase in Fe and Mn content in the treatments having 2 or more organic amendments over control. Zn and Cu content also increased but the increment was significant with combined application of 3 or 4 organic amendments. The study revealed that addition of four organic amendments viz. BGA, Azolla, FYM and Vermicompost could give the optimum yield (4.05 t/ha) of organic Basmati rice and improve grain and soil quality

Transverse Momentum Distribution and Elliptic Flow of Charged Hadrons in UU+UU collisions at sNN=193\sqrt{s_{NN}}=193 GeV using HYDJET++

Recent experimental observations of the charged hadron properties in $U+U$ collisions at $193$ GeV contradict many of the theoretical models of particle production including two-component Monte Carlo Glauber model. The experimental results show a small correlation between the charged hadron properties and the initial geometrical configurations (e.g. body-body, tip-tip etc.) of $U+U$ collisions. In this article, we have modified the Monte Carlo HYDJET++ model to study the charged hadron production in $U+U$ collisions at $193$ GeV center-of-mass energy in tip-tip and body-body initial configurations. We have modified the hard as well as soft production processes to make this model suitable for $U+U$ collisions. We have calculated the pseudorapidity distribution, transverse momentum distribution and elliptic flow distribution of charged hadrons with different control parameters in various geometrical configurations possible for $U+U$ collision. We find that HYDJET++ model supports a small correlation between the various properties of charged hadrons and the initial geometrical configurations of $U+U$ collision. Further, the results obtained in modified HYDJET++ model regarding $dn_{ch}/d\eta$ and elliptic flow ($v_{2}$) suitably matches with the experimental data of $U+U$ collisions in minimum bias configuration.Comment: 29 pages, 25 figures. Accepted for Publication in EPJ