Rice based cropping systems imparts significant economic importance to the state of Andhra Pradesh. Of the rice based systems, rice-rice and rice-rice-black gram/green gram are the most popular systems in coastal region of Andhra Pradesh. Recently, farmers of the region are witnessing either severe water scarcity during winter rice or decline in productivity of pulses every year due to severe infestation of diseases. Thus the rice fallows are replaced by maize and the area under rice-rice-maize and rice-maize-maize are increasing in acreage. Presence of neutral environment through out the year which is congenial for maize cultivation, availability of improved maize hybrids with drought tolerance, rising demand of maize for poultry and livestock industries and assured price for farmers are some of the driving factors encouraging most of the farmers in this region to grow maize. However, appropriate nutrient management practices for attaining desired yield targets are lacking in the region and there is an opportunity for collaborative research programmes to develop guidelines and streamlining the nutrient recommendations for the emerging rice-maize cropping system under different management scenarios. Further, there is an immense need to develop effective nutrient management schedules to increase system productivity and factor productivity besides enhancing the farmer profitability and environment safety. Therefore, the present research project is proposed to device effective site-specific nutrient management schedules for rice–maize cropping system, which is predominantly practiced in Krishna and Godavari agro-climatic zones of Andhra Pradesh.

Objectives
1. To know the site- specific NPK requirement for rice to achieve a predetermined yield target.
2. To study NPK requirement of maize as a succeeding crop to achieve a pre targeted yield and to know whether or not these nutrient requirements get affected by the fertilizers given to preceding crop.
3. To work out site specific economic nutrient schedules for rice- maize cropping system.