Conservation Agriculture – A New Paradigm for Climate Change Mitigation in Rainfed Indian Agriculture

Abstract

A field experiment was carried out in rainfed semi-arid tropics of India to develop sustainable conservation agriculture (CA) practices as an alternative to conventional agriculture practices to increase yields, soil fertility in pigeon pea –castor cropping system. But this may offset the benefits by increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions; hence the GHG emissions were monitored. A replicated trial was laid out in split plot design with three tillage practices viz., conventional tillage (CT), reduced tillage (RT) and zero tillage (ZT) and three anchored residue height (0 cm, 10 cm and 30 cm). The pooled analysis of data showed that seed yield and biological yield are influenced by tillage practices and anchored residue height. ZT recorded significantly lower yields (seed and biological yield) in both crop (pigeonpea and castor) compared to conventional and reduced tillage. In general, with increase in anchored residue height seed yield increased. CT recorded the higher harvest index as compared to the ZT. A higher CO2 emission was recorded in ZT whereas the N2O emission was lower and no significant difference was observed in methane oxidation between tillage practices.