Impact of Organic Mulches and Intercropping on Microbial Population and Enzyme Activities in Irrigated Finger Millet (Eleusine coracana L.)

Field experiment was conducted at the Department of Agronomy, Agricultural college and Research Institute, Killikulam, to study the impact of organic mulches and intercropping on microbial population and enzyme activity in irrigated Finger millet in a factorial randomized block design (FRBD). The treatments consisted of mulching as main factor including rice straw, coconut shredded waste and a control without mulch. The sub factor included intercrops black gram, small onion, palak, coriander and a control without intercrops. Rhizospheric soil samples were collected on 60 DAS and were analyzed for microbial population, biomass carbon and dehydrogenase activity. Application of rice straw mulch without intercrop (M1I0) recorded significantly higher population of bacteria, fungi, actinobacteria (41.3 x 107, 33.0 x 105 and 17.3 x 103 CFU g-1 soil respectively), soil biomass carbon (0.456 g of CO2 / 10 g of soil) and higher activity of dehydrogenase (1.534 μg of TPF g-1 of dry soil h-1) followed by coconut shredded waste mulching without intercrops (M2I0).