Sub sections:
Replacing fertiliser N with rhizobial inoculants for legumes in Vietnam for greater farm profitability and environmental benefits
Project leader: Professor David Herridge
This 3-year project, funded by AusAID through the CARD (Collaboration for Agriculture & Rural Development) program in Vietnam, aims to increase production and use of high-quality legume inoculants in the country through improved inoculant production capacity and quality assurance (QA), inoculant R&D and effective on-farm extension programs. Collaborating institutes are the National Soils and Fertilisers Institute, Hanoi, (SFI), the Research Institute for Oil and Oil Plants, HCM City, (IOOP) and the Institute of Agricultural Science, HCM City, (IAS). The Vietnam agricultural extension service, MARD (Ministry for Agriculture & Rural Development), and a number of private sector companies are also involved in extension and marketing. With the private sector companies, the aim was that they would scale-up inoculant production and progressively take over supply as the technology and markets were developed.
The context of the project is that farmers in Vietnam currently fertilise legumes such as soybean and groundnut with N, rather than inoculate with rhizobia. Replacing fertiliser N with rhizobial inoculants would save Vietnamese farmers A$50-60 million annually in input costs and, at the same time, help facilitate the desired expansion in legume production. There would also be positive environmental outcomes.
During 2009, all three institutes continued to be engaged in training and research on all aspects of inoculant production, viz fermentation, carriers, rhizobial strains, quality assurance etc. Two milestone reports were submitted to CARD – Capacity Improvement Report and the High Quality Inoculants Technical Report.
The major experimental and extension activities were essentially completed during 2009. During the life of the project, a total of 36 replicated, multi-treatment research and 168 unreplicated, single treatment demonstration field trials were conducted in the major legume-production areas of Vietnam. The Australian rhizobial strains were the most effective in terms of nodulation, biomass yield and grain yield. Compared with the uninoculated control, strains CB1809 and NC92 increased nodulation of soybean and groundnut, respectively, by an average of 58%, biomass yield by 30% and grain yield by 29%. Economic analysis of the demonstration trials indicated an average increase in farmer profits of 4.500.000VNĐ/ha, through a combination of reduced inputs of fertiliser N and increase grain yields. The trials also proved effective for training and extension purposes with 3400+ person visits to the sites and evidence from farmer surveys of dramatically increased knowledge of inoculants.