ASHS 2024 Conference

Nitrogen is a crucial macronutrient for potato production, as it plays a vital role in promoting photosynthesis, chlorophyll synthesis, and overall plant growth, ultimately contributing to higher crop yield. However, the shallow root system of potato plants and the sandy soil conditions in this region make applied nitrogen unavailable to the crop, resulting in reduced nitrogen use efficiency (NUE). An alternative and eco-friendly solution is to integrate microbial consortium inoculation in nutrient management plans. This approach entails the introduction of a mixture of beneficial microorganisms known as plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR), into the soil to promote plant growth. These N2-fixing microbes can increase soil N availability which could meet N demand of potato crop, hence can help in reducing N fertilizer input rate. Therefore, a commercial microbial biostimulant was applied with five different N rates 0, 78, 157, 235, and 314 kg ha-1. We found that microbial biostimulant did not increase tuber yield but improved NUE. Increasing N rate increased tuber yield, biomass and NUE significantly.