The crops under leguminous family are mainly used as green manuring crops for their capacity of making nodules in roots for fixing nitrogen, other than all young and green plants. However, which plant is more preferable/effective for it?
This is a question , we have debated numbe of times through various threads.
The practice of green manuring is very ancient. The Greeks turned under broad beans around 300 B.C., and the planting of beans and lupines for soil improvement was a common practice in the early years of the Roman Empire. The Chinese wrote about the fertilizing value of grass and weeds hundreds of years ago and the early colonists in North America commonly used buckwheat, oats, and rye to add organic matter to the soil. Farmers in the southeastern United States recognized early in the 18th century the value of green manure crops, especially the legumes, but the usage of green manure in North America peaked in the 1940s, with a notable decline in planted acreage since that time. With the current trend toward the use of "organic' fertilizers, many people are again looking at green manuring as an economical, practical, and even aesthetically pleasing method of restoring productivity to idle or overworked land.
Leguminous crops are more effective for green manure. Because leguminous crops supply organic matter and significant amount of nitrogen due to biological nitrogen fixation.
Leguminous crops, especially jet, alfalfa, bean residues, cowpeas, beans and soybeans
Besides leguminous crops, leaves of N fixing trees viz. glaricidia, sesbania, acacia may be used for green manuring purpose
Lab lab, mucuna spp, cajanus cajan due to their penenial nature of growth.
In bananas, Crotalaria is a genus of phanerogams belonging to the Fabaceae family.
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