Improvement in soil nutrient status and beneficial microbial populations using compost, plant juice and home-made fertiliser preparations

Summary

Natural farming (NF) techniques use farm inputs such as indigenous microbes (IMO), composts, fermented fruit and plant juices, fish amino acids and other home made fertiliser preparations in managing the soil fertility. Experiments were carried out on farmers’ plots at two different sites, Air Kuning and Serdang to quantify the effectiveness of the technique using long beans (Vigna sesquipedalis) as the test crop. Soil qualities such as the carbon content, total nitrogen and cation exchange capacity especially that of calcium, increased significantly after planting in the NF plots compared to the conventional farming (CF) plots. A higher number of beneficial microbes such as Azotobacter, Azospirillum, Actinomycete, Lactobacillus, was obtained during harvest on the NF treated plots in Air Kuning, a site that has been cultivated under natural farming for 2 years. There was a slight drop in soil pathogens such as Erwinia and Fusarium in the soil in the NF treated plots. However, no significant changes in both NF and CF plots were obtained in Serdang, a plot that was prior to the experiment cultivated under conventional farming. Higher yields, however, were obtained in the NF plots at Air Kuning.