Seven years of conservation agriculture in a rice-wheat rotation of Eastern Gangetic Plains of South Asia: Yield trends and economic profitability

摘要

Water, energy and labour scarcity, increasing cost of production, diminishing farm profits and uncertain weather events are major challenges faced by the farmers under intensive tillage based conventional rice-wheat (RW) production system of Indo-Gangetic Plains (IGP) in South Asia. To address these challenges, conservation agriculture (CA) based crop management practices are being developed, adapted and promoted in the region. We evaluated agronomical productivity and economical profitability of various combinations of tillage, crop establishment and residue management practices in rice-wheat rotation of Eastern IGP of India: a smallholder, poorly resourced and most vulnerable regions for the climatic variability. The long-term trial was initiated in 2006 having 7 combinations of tillage, crop establishment and residue management in rice-wheat rotation. These consisted of conventional till puddled transplanted rice followed by conventional tilled wheat (CTR-CTW); CTR followed by zero tilled wheat (CTR-ZTW); direct seeded rice followed by wheat both on permanent raised beds (PBDSR-PBW); zero-till direct seeded rice followed by CTW (ZTDSR-CTW); ZTDSR followed by ZTW without residues (ZTDSR-ZTW); ZTDSR followed by ZTW with residues (ZTDSR-ZTW+ R) and unpuddled transplanted rice followed by ZTW (UpTPR-ZTW). All these treatments were completely randomized and replicated thrice within a block.