Techno-economic performance of conservation agriculture machinery for planting soybean in the south east coastal region of Bangladesh

摘要

Agriculture in the coastal region of Bangladesh is characterized by low productivity due to salinity, water logging, less practice of modern technologies, and repeated crop losses due to natural calamities. Agricultural machinery especially the conservation agriculture (CA) machinery is used in limited scale in this region. The field experiment was conducted for planting of soybean in farmers' fields of Charwapda, Subornochar, Noakhali during Rabi (Dry winter) season of 2018 for testing of minimum tillage machine cum seeder (CA planter) along with conventional tilling and sowing. Other CA machines (Strip and zero tillers) could not be practiced in these fields due to high soil moisture (Above 30%). First, the soil was opened with shallow tilling bytwo-wheel tractor (power tiller) 7-12 days before seed sowing for drying of excess soil moisture. Soybean seed was planted in line with BARI seeder in single pass. In conventional method, land was prepared by power tiller or tractor with 3-4 passes and seed was broadcasted in the tilth soil. The effective field capacities of BARI seeder and power tiller for soybean planting were 0.12 and 0.090 hah1, respectively. Fuel and cost savings by BARI seeder were 40% and 35% respectively compared to conventionalmethod. Significantly higher (16%) grain yield was obtained from BARI seeder (1.98 t/ha) over conventional method (1.70 t/ha). Higher economic return (BCR) was obtained from BARI seeder (1.86) compared to conventional tilling and sowing method (1.10). The break-even use of machine operation was estimated as 0.17 ha of land per year. The soybean planting and planted crops in the fields were demonstrated to the local farmers through field days. The capacity of 20 machine operators on operation and maintenance of BARI seeder was developed through two hand-on trainings. Farmers showed keen interest for growing soybean using CA planter.