ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Climate-Smart Food Systems
Volume 9 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2025.1660079
This article is part of the Research TopicBuilding Resilience Through Sustainability: Innovative Strategies In Agricultural SystemsView all 22 articles
Influence of legume diversification and fertilization on potassium pools under distinct cropping system ecologies: Insight from 14-years study
Provisionally accepted- 1Indian Institute of Pulses Research (ICAR), Kanpur, India
- 2ICAR - Indian Institute of Groundnut Research, Junagadh, India
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Sustaining levels of soil potassium (K) pools in soils across agro-ecologies are crucial for optimizing nutrient use, prevent K depletion, and ensure long-term soil health. This study explores the underlying mechanisms and interconnections among various K pools under contrasting upland (maize-based) and lowland (rice-based) ecologies from a 14 years long-term field experiment conducted on Fluvisols encompassing four cropping systems (main plots) and three nutrient management strategies (sub-plots). The maize–wheat–maize– chickpea system recorded the highest water-soluble (15.6 kg ha-1) and exchangeable K (162.7 kg ha-1), while pigeonpea–wheat had the highest non-exchangeable K (1826.2 kg ha-1), over maize–wheat (p<0.05). In the 0-15 cm, INM significantly improved soil K fractions over RDF, with water-soluble, exchangeable, non-exchangeable, and total K increasing by 37.6%, 17.9%, 12.2%, and 10.1%, respectively. In lowland ecology, the rice–wheat system contains 50% and 30% higher water-soluble K than rice–wheat–rice–chickpea and rice– wheat–mungbean at 0–15 cm. While, exchangeable and non-exchangeable K increased by 3.4–13% in the same over other systems. At 15–30 cm, rice–wheat–rice–chickpea recorded 9-10% higher water-soluble K and exchangeable K than other systems. Ecology-wise, a notable finding was that lowland soils exhibited 3-4 times higher water-soluble K, 52% more exchangeable K, and 5–10% higher non-exchangeable K than upland soils (p<0.05). Wheat yields correlated significantly with total, exchangeable, and water-soluble K in upland. Rice yields in lowland significantly correlated with total, non-exchangeable, and water-soluble K, indicating the importance of soil K reserves in crop productivity. Systems like pigeonpea–wheat, maize–wheat–maize–chickpea, and rice–wheat–rice–chickpea were most effective in replenishing K reserves, offering a scalable strategy to support soil K levels against intensive cereal based systems underlining the ecological benefits of legume inclusion and integrated nutrient management in sustaining soil K dynamics across diverse production systems.
Keywords: Cereal–legume rotations, Integrated nutrient management, Potassium stratification, Total potassium, Upland and lowland ecology
Received: 05 Jul 2025; Accepted: 30 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Nath, Dutta, Hazra, Kumar, PRAHARAJ, Kumar, Hashim and DIXIT. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Chaitanya Prasad Nath, cpnath4@gmail.com
Asik Dutta, asikdutta975@gmail.com
Narendra Kumar, nkumar.icar@gmail.com
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