Peerzada Ummer
Srinagar, Aug 11: Rice growth and yield can be drastically improved through the judicious use of additional doses of nitrogen and sulfur fertilisers, a latest study conducted in the Kashmir Valley has revealed.
The research, published in the July 2025 edition of the Archives of Current Research International, was led by a team from the Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology of Kashmir (SKUAST-K) and involved collaboration among ten scientists from various research stations across the valley.
The field experiment, carried out at the Crop Research Farm of the Faculty of Agriculture, Wadura, during the 2021 kharif season, was designed to address a persistent problem in paddy cultivation, nutrient imbalance in soils, particularly the deficiency of secondary nutrients like sulfur, which has been exacerbated by the excessive use of high-analysis fertilisers in recent years.
The researchers tested various combinations and doses of nitrogen and sulfur on the popular rice variety ‘Shalimar rice-4’, assessing their impact on plant growth, yield attributes, and economic returns. Results showed that applying nitrogen at 80 kg per hectare alongside sulfur at 30 kg per hectare yielded the best results, not only boosting crop growth and panicle numbers but also achieving the highest benefit-cost ratio of 2.23 among the tested treatments.
The findings suggest that this combination allows for a reduction in the recommended nitrogen dose from 120 kg to 80 kg per hectare, representing a 33 per cent saving in nitrogen use while maintaining or even improving yield and profitability.
Major improvements were recorded in plant height, leaf area index, number of panicles, spikelets per panicle, filled grains, and overall grain yield. The highest yields were obtained when nitrogen at 80 kg per hectare was combined with sulfur at 45 kg per hectare, confirming the synergistic effect of these nutrients on rice productivity.
The study also highlighted that increasing sulfur application beyond 30 kg per hectare did not bring proportionally higher returns, emphasising the importance of balanced fertilisation.
“Reducing nitrogen use not only cuts costs for farmers but also decreases nitrogen losses to surface and groundwater, as well as atmospheric pollution,” the research claimed.
The authors recommend that the promising results be validated at other locations across the Kashmir Valley to ensure consistent performance under varying agro-climatic conditions.
