Abstract
Potassium (K) is an essential plant nutrient, and deficiency in the availability of K limits plant growth. Organic amendment in agricultural fields is required to sustain soil health; however, maintaining K availability is a major challenge in organic matter-treated soil. In this context, mica waste, a high potassium-containing mineral, could be an alternative K source for arable soil. In this study, a series of experiments were conducted to evaluate how mica waste could be applied with vermicompost for improving K availability in organic-amended soil. It was observed that vermicomposting of mica waste-amended organic substrates did not increase total K content in the final vermicompost, though earthworms harbour potassium-solubilizing bacteria in their guts. Hence, application of vermicompost, prepared from mica waste-amended organic substrates, did not increase K availability in soil. However, combined application of conventional vermicompost with mica waste was effective to increase K availability in soil, and that was effective to achieve better plant growth and higher K uptake in tea. In this study, combined application of vermicompost and mica waste (at 10% weight of vermicompost) was effective to increase plant growth and K availability in soil.
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Acknowledgement
The corresponding author is thankful to the Director of Tea Research Association and Deputy Director of North Bengal Regional R&D Centre, Nagrakata, for kindly providing the facilities to conduct the project work. The work of this chapter was financially supported by the funding of the National Tea Research Foundation (NTRF), Tea Board of India (NTRF: 183/2016).
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Pramanik, P., Kalita, C., Kalita, P., Goswami, A.J. (2020). Evaluating Method of Mica Waste Application in Earthworm Cast-Treated Soil for Enhancing Potassium Availability to the Plants with Reference to Tea. In: Bhat, S., Vig, A., Li, F., Ravindran, B. (eds) Earthworm Assisted Remediation of Effluents and Wastes. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4522-1_13
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