International Journal of Environment and Climate Change

A field study was conducted to assess the effect of crop establishment methods on rhizospheric soil microbiota in mustard due to different land-use system at the Research Farm, Department of Forestry, College of Agriculture, JNKVV, Jabalpur (MP) for two consecutive years (2022–23 and 2023-24). The experiment was assessed in the double-split plot design with three replications. The experiment consisted of two land-use systems as main plot treatment (S₁: Agroforestry system and S₂: Open system), three crop establishment methods of mustard (M₁: Broadcasting, M₂: Line sowing, and M₃: Transplanting) as sub-plot treatments and four levels of boron (B₀: Control, B₁: 1 kg ha^-1 as basal B₂: 2 kg ha^-1 and B₃: ½ kg ha^-1 as basal + ½ kg ha^-1 as foliar spray) as sub-sub plot treatments. The soil samples were collected after harvesting of crop during both the years of study to analyse soil microbiota (total bacteria, azotobacter, rhizobium, total fungi and actinomycetes). The results revealed that, significantly higher counts of azotobacter (31.37 CFU x 10⁵), rhizobium (21.99 CFU x 10⁶), total bacteria (42.78 CFU x 10⁶), total fungi (8.30 CFU x 10⁵) and actinomycetes (12.98 CFU x 10⁵) were higher under agroforestry system than the open system. Meanwhile higher counts of azotobacter, rhizobium, total bacteria, total fungi and actinomycetes were found to be significantly superior in broadcasting (29.59 CFU x 10⁵, 20.28 CFU x 106, 37.52 CFU x 10⁶, 7.97 CFU x 10⁵, 12.68 CFU x 10⁵, respectively) over both line sowing and transplanting crop establishment methods. In case of boron levels, no significant changes occurred in the soil biology under both agroforestry and open systems. Hence, it could be concluded that vegetative cover over soil helps to proliferation of population of soil microbiota in the rhizospheric zone of crop.