Conservation tillage as an approach to enhance crops water use efficiency

Abstract

ABSTRACTConservation tillage practices great role in improving productivity of water. This study hypothesis that tied-ridging and riding tillage could enhance the yield and water use efficiency. Hence, a field experiment was carried out to investigate their potentiality in improving the water use efficiencies for different crops (cotton, groundnut, sorghum and wheat) compared to basin (control) during two excessive seasons. The experiments were organized in a spilt-plot experimental design. The water use efficacies (WUEs) were examined in term of technical, economical and hydraulic water use efficiencies for the both conservation tillage under irrigated conditions. The results indicated that both the conservation tillage techniques showed positive effect (P ≤ .05) on the WUEs. The tied-ridging gave the highest values of WUEs than ridging for all crops. Moreover, tied-ridging increased the average values of water use efficiency by 75%, 48%, 17% and 85% for cotton, sorghum, groundnut and wheat, respectively, compared to that of control treatment, which significantly differed from the ridging treatment. Accordingly, conservation tillage improved WUE and the capability of soil to keep moisture which is reflected in high crops production. This suggests that there is substantial scope for improving irrigation water use efficiency of crops by adoption of conservation tillage.