​Conservation Agriculture Practices: Impact on Productivity, Energy Utilisation and Profitability of Legume-based Cropping System

Abstract

Background: Conservation agriculture (CA), an agricultural production system with optimum inputs, high returns and sustainability while conserving environment is primarily required for command areas and rainfed uplands. CA helps to improve and conserve soil health through crop rotation, mulching, minimum field traffic and mechanical soil disturbance etc and conserve water to achieve economically and ecologically sustainable crop production. Methods: The field experiment was conducted for two years during 2019-21 to evaluate the influence of conservation agricultural practices on the system productivity, production efficiency and energy use under legume based cropping system in a command area. Treatments comprised of four cropping systems as Groundnut - foxtail millet (C1), Groundnut - barnyard millet (C2), Daincha - foxtail millet (C3) and Daincha - barn yard millet (C4) in main plots and foliar application of organics, 3% panchagavya, 1% PPFM and 0.1% humic acid formed subplots. Result: System productivity in terms of Groundnut equivalent yield (GEY) was significantly higher (8395 kg/ha) in the Groundnut - Barnyard millet cropping system with foliar application of PPFM 1% in CA system than that of conventional method. The production efficiency was maximum in Groundnut - barnyard millet system (34.41 kg/ha/day) and Groundnut - foxtail millet recorded the highest energy use efficiency (6.8%) which shows that maximum energy was effectively utilized under the system. Daincha - foxtail millet system had highest energy productivity of 0.91 kg M/J. Thus, the conservation tillage based Groundnut - barnyard millet system recorded more system productivity, highest resource use efficiency (both production and land use efficiency) and the highest energy use efficiency.