Effect of microbial consortia and moisture regimes on mustard yield and productivity in Northwestern India

Across the globe, microbial consortia for plant nutrition have been explored widely, but systematic knowledge on their effects on moisture stress mitigation is meagre. To investigate microbial consortia, influence on addressing moisture stress and improving Indian mustard productivity under diverse moisture regimes a field experiment was conducted during rabi seasons of 2021–2022 and 2022–2023 at the Research Farm, Chatha, Jammu, India. Conventional and 50 % deficit irrigation and unirrigated (rainfed) treatments were evaluated with five microbial consortia namely, MRD 17, MKS 6, Biophos+Biophos+, CRIDA MI-I and CRIDA MI-II. Conventional irrigation, though at par with 50 % deficit irrigation along with application of microbial consortia CRIDA MI-II followed by application of CRIDA MI-I and Biophos+Biophos+ resulted in significant increase in seed yield, oil yield, yield attributes, net returns, benefit cost ratio, soil microbial population of Indian mustard than unirrigated plots and use of MRD 17 and MKS 6 microbial consortia in comparison, respectively. The bacterial population (48 %) dominated the soils followed by fungi (31 %) and actinomycetes (21 %) populations and were significantly affected by the use of microbial inoculation like CRIDA MI-II, CRIDA MI-I and Biophos+Biophos+ formulations thereby significantly influencing the microbial population in the soils. A significant positive correlation (0.87) was observed between the seed yield and relative water content in view of effective moisture stress mitigation through use of microbes like CRIDA MI-II and CRIDA MI-I. Based on the study, CRIDA MI-II microbial consortia with 50 % deficit irrigation can be recommended in water limited agro-ecologies.