3.4. Recommendation of balanced mineral fertilizers for different cane producing zones
The doses of mineral fertilizers for achieving 100 Mg cane yield ha-1 varied in different cane producing zones of Uttar Pradesh (Table 8). Based on TYE, the greater nutrient will be required for plant crop than ratoon compared to recommended dose of mineral fertilizers (RDF) across the cane producing zones. The highest N fertilizers required in WZ soils followed by EZ and CZ, while EZ soils required greater amount of P and K followed by WZ and CZ for both plant and ratoon crops. Nitrogen doses varied from 211−541, 170−344 and 260−474 kg N ha-1 with mean values of 348, 261 and 386 kg N ha-1 for plant crop, whereas 98−407, 59−222 and 144−344 kg N ha-1 with mean value of 226, 144 and 262 kg N ha-1 for ratoon crop in EZ, CZ and WZ, respectively. Phosphorus doses ranged from 6–89, −4–70 and 23−88 with mean value of 73, 33 and 55 kg P2O5ha-1 for plant crop, whereas slight lower P doses will be require for ratoon crop which ranged from -12–58, −20−42 and 3–58 kg P2O5 ha-1 with mean value of 45, 11 and 29 kg P2O5ha-1 in EZ, CZ and WZ, respectively. For plant crop, the doses of K varied from 98–302, 83–241 and 62−277 kg K2O ha-1 with mean value of 262, 152 and 211 kg K2O ha-1, whereas 61–209, 50–164 and 35–191 kg K2O ha-1 with mean value of 180, 100 and 142 kg K2O ha-1 required for ratoon crop in different cane producing zones of Uttar Pradesh, respectively.