Abstract
Resource conserving and eco-friendly interventions through improved crop establishment are the need of time to produce more with less resources, and mitigating climatic vulnerabilities and protecting environmental quality in the rice–wheat cropping system (RWCS) of India. In this context, seven years (2010–2017) field experimentation at Karnal, Haryana, India revealed that the weed infestation was more intensified and diversified in direct seeded rice (DSR) than puddled transplanted rice (PTR), and even eliminating puddling in rice-induced more infestation of Phalaris minor in succeeding wheat crop. Residue retention in zero-till (ZT) DSR and rotating conventional till (CT) DSR with PTR reduced weed pressure compared to continuous DSR. Root knot and plant parasitic nematodes were less in DSR than PTR but reverse was true for saprozoic nematodes in DSR and ZT situations. CTDSR, ZTDSR (with or without residues), and ZT/CT machine-transplanted rice (MTR) produced grain yields at par (P = 0.05) with PTR. The grain yield of ZT wheat (5.03–6.90 t ha−1) in sequence with CT/ZT rice establishment (DSR/MTR) was 0.3–0.6 t ha−1 higher than what it was attained after puddled rice systems. Net returns from DSR/MTR-based cropping systems were higher than PTR, with 22–31% saving of labor. Irrigation water productivity was also higher under DSR (27.5–29.9 kg ha-cm−1) than PTR (23.7 kg ha-cm−1), with 17.5–22.8% reduction in irrigation input. There was also improvement in soil health under ZTDSR/MTR (higher OC, N, P and K, and lower bulk density) compared to PTR. Overall, the resource conservation and soil health improvement through these planting methods signaled toward system stability over trade-offs in RWCS.
Highlights
Rice–wheat is the most prominent cropping system in south Asia occupying 13.5 million hectares’ area in Indo-Gangetic Plains (IGP), out of which India has 10 m ha followed by Pakistan (2.2 m ha), Bangladesh (0.8 m ha) and Nepal (0.5 m ha) [1]
The soil properties recorded at the termination of the experiment, i.e., after wheat harvest (2017) indicated that the soil pH decreased under zero-till wheat (ZTW) sequenced with non-puddled or zero-till direct seeded rice (DSR)/ machine-transplanted rice (MTR) (8.20–8.32) than in sequence with puddled transplanted rice (PTR) (8.41–8.42) (Table 1)
Organic carbon was improved under ZTW-ZTDSR/MTR (0.41–0.45%) and it was higher than ZTW/conventional till wheat (CTW)-PTR (0.31–0.32%)
Summary
Rice–wheat is the most prominent cropping system in south Asia occupying 13.5 million hectares’ area in Indo-Gangetic Plains (IGP), out of which India has 10 m ha followed by Pakistan (2.2 m ha), Bangladesh (0.8 m ha) and Nepal (0.5 m ha) [1]. Rice in India is grown in 44 m ha area with 113 mt grain production (2017–18), and wheat in 30 m ha with 100 mt production [2]. The decline or stagnation in total factor productivity of rice–wheat cropping system (RWCS) along with depletion of natural resources in north west (NW) India [3,4,5] along with increasing population have led to putting extra efforts for increasing the productivity and profitability of this important cropping system. Manual transplanting in puddled soil is the traditional method of rice crop establishment in north-western India. Results in disintegration of soil aggregates, disturbance of macro-pores and negative impact
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