Maize based system with precision conservation agriculture: a suitable alternative to rice-wheat rotation in Indo-Gangetic plains of India.

Abstract

Rice-wheat (RW) cropping system in north-west India, although providing foodsecurity in the country, have led to soil degradation and over exploitation of underground water resources (Hobbs and Gupta, 2004; Sharma et al., 2012). Furthermore, conventional crop management practices for RW system entail high production costs and are highly inefficient in the use of inputs. The diversification ofRW systems with maize-based systems and alternate soil and crop management spractices could help enhance the system productivity, sustain soil health and environmental qualityand save irrigation water and labour costs, provide palatable fodder and meet increased demand of maize grains from piggery and poultry industries (Singh et al., 2016). Maize, an important crop for food and nutritional security as maize grain is mainly used for feed (63%), food (23%) and industrial purpose (13%) in the country (Yadav et al., 2014). In the past, maize was evaluated as an alternate crop to rice with conventional management practices in RW system, but it was not proved economical due to its lower yield and market price. However, in recent years with the introduction of single cross high yielding maize hybrids and mechanized maize cultivation with availability of good postemergence herbicides provided options for crop diversification in RW systems.In the north-western Indo-Gangetic plains (IGP) maize is commonly grown in rotation with wheat. Integration of short-duration legumes (e.g. mungbean) in cropping system improves the soil health and increase farmer’s profit in a cereal-cropping systems (Parihar et al. 2016a). Hence, an experiment was initiated at ICAR-IIMR, Ludhianato compare the performance of the rice-wheat- moongbean(RWMb)with maize-wheat-moongbean(MWMb)systemunder conventional and conservation agriculture practices. In comparison to RWMb system, the system productivity was 33% (15% in 2017-18) and 25% (11% in 2017-18) higher in conservation and conventional tillage basedMWMb system, respectively in the 2nd year. The B:C ratio were also highest in conservation MWMb system (2.67 and 3.35) system (2.03 and 2.75) and least inconventional RWMb system (1.88 and 2.24). Further, the MWMb system was also water- efficient as it reduced water consumption by 82.8 % as compared to rice-wheat system. Hence,MWMb system can be grown 5-6 times, with the same amount of water used to grow one cycle of rice􀀐wheat system. So, replacement of RWMb system with MWMb system increased system productivity (up to 33%), profitability (up to 50 %) and also resulted in huge (82 %) water saving.Therefore, the maize-wheat- mungbean system with conservation followed by conventional practices offers suitable alternative to the conventional rice- wheat system for saving of wateralong enhancing productivity and profitability to ensure sustainability of agriculture in North-Western plain zone and similar agroecologies.