Ms. Hoque, BRADYRHIZOBIUM TECHNOLOGY - A PROMISING SUBSTITUTE FOR CHEMICAL NITROGEN-FERTILIZER IN BANGLADESH AGRICULTURE, Plant and soil, 156, 1993, pp. 337-340
Nitrogen is the most limiting element in Bangladesh soils and urea is
the fertilizer commonly used for supplying it. Bradyrhizobium/Rhizobiu
m inoculant was tried as a source of N nutrition for grain legumes in
a number of field experiments. The inoculants markedly increased nodul
e number, nodule mass, shoot weight and yield of the crops compared to
uninoculated control and urea-N treatments. For soybean (Glycine max)
, inoculation increased yield 113 percent over the control and 49 perc
ent over the urea treament. For groundnut (Arachis hypogaea), the incr
eases were 36 and 11 percent; for lentil (Lens culinaris), 30 and 13 p
ercent; and for mungbean (Vigna radiata), 47 and 7 percent. The local
inoculant strains were suitable for dependable inoculant production. T
he inoculant technology can be used as a promising and cheap substitut
e of urea for growing food legume crops in Bangladesh.