Sustainability, productivity, profitability and soil health with conservation agriculture based sustainable intensification of oilseed brassica production system

Abstract

Conservation agriculture (CA) practices are getting space world-wide to answer many emerging challenges like; declining factor productivity, deteriorating soil health, water scarcity, climate change, and farm profitability and sustainability. Oilseed brassica (Indian mustard, Brassica juncea L.), a winter oilseed grown under rainfed agro-ecosystem is vulnerable to low yields, high production cost, degrading soil and water quality, and climatic vagaries. The present study was undertaken on CA-based sustainable intensification of Indian mustard for enhancing inputs efficiencies, farm profitability and sustainability. Permanent beds with residue retention (PB+R) improved mustard equivalent yield (11.4%) and system grain yield (10.6%) compared with conventional tillage without residue (CTR). Maizemustard rotation (MzM) increased system grain yield (142.9%) as well as mustard equivalent yield (60.7%) compared with fallow-mustard (F-M). MzM system under PB+R increased sustainable yield index (376.5%), production efficiency (177.2%), economic efficiency (94%) and irrigation water productivity (66%) compared with F-M under CTR. PB+R increased soil organic carbon (SOC) stock at 015 cm (17.7%) and 1530 cm (29.5%) soil depth compared with CTR. Addition of green gram in rotation with mustard improved SOC at 015 cm (27.4%) and 1530 cm (20.5%) compared with F-M system. CA-based cluster bean-mustard/GG-M system increased N productivity, whereas, P and K productivity improved with MzM system compared with F-M under CTR. Thus, CA-based MzM system should be out-scaled in the traditional rainfed fallow-mustard system to improve the farm production and income on holistic basis to make the country self-sufficient in edible oils.