Abstract:
To increase agricultural harvest, growers have been using chemical fertilizers (CF), the amount
of which has increased over time. The declined soil quality, fertility, microbial diversity and
many health hazards have been reported as negative impacts of CF. Thus, there is an urgent need
to find out alternative methods to reduce the CF usage. As a novel improvement in
biotechnology, useful microbial communities in biofilm mode have been developed in vitro to be
applied as biofertilizers, which are called as Biofilm Biofertilizer (BFBF). The usage of BFBF can
reduce CF usage in rice. It has been shown in small scale that BFBFs can cut down CF use by
farmers in rice up to 50% or more without affecting grain yield. Therefore, this study was
conducted to evaluate the effect of BFBF on soil parameters and grain yield of rice. Field
experiments were conducted in 12 farmer fields in Polonnaruwa district in yala season in 2018.
The experiment was arranged in a randomized block design for paired comparison with two
consecutive, uniform paddy fields applied with the BFBF practice (1 L BFBF with 90 kg NPK per
acre) and the farmers’ CF practice (195 kg NPK per acre) as treatments. There were 12
replicates for each treatment. Means of rhizosphere soil moisture (%), pH, total N (%), total P
(%), organic C (%), exchangeable K (cmol/kg) and final yield (kg/acre) of the two practices were
calculated. T-test was done for mean comparison. Results showed that there is a significant
increase (P < 0.05) in grain yield (21%) in the BFBF with reduced dose of CF practice, compared
to the CF practice. Furthermore, BFBF with reduced dose of CF practice showed significant
increases (P < 0.05) in soil moisture (26%), total N (555%) and organic C (22%). Thus, it can be
concluded that BFBF helps in cutting down CF while improving grain yield and soil conditions in
farmers’ fields.
