Abstract
The rice–wheat cropping system being the backbone of food security in South-Asia has resulted in soil health deterioration, declining water table, and air pollution affecting livability index of the region. The effect of rice residue retention (RRR), irrigation levels and foliar application of K on wheat grain yield (GY), water use efficiency (WUE) and profitability was tested over three years. RRR increased wheat GY (5224 kg ha−1), above-ground biomass (AGBM = 11.9 t ha−1), tillers per square meter (TPM = 469) and grains per meter square (GrPMS = 13,917) significantly. Relative water content (RWC = 93.8) and WUE (2.45 k gm−3) were also increased significantly by RRR. Consequently, profitability (Net return = 624.4 $ and Benefit to cost (B:C) ratio) was enhanced. Foliar application of K enhanced GY (5151 kg ha−1), AGBM (12 t ha−1), RWC (94.1), SPAD (52.2), WUE (2.40 kg m−3), net returns (625.2 $) and BC ratio (1.62) significantly. RRR increased GY (15.66%) and WUE (17.39%) with additional revenue of 151 $ with only one irrigation at the CRI stage (ICS). RRR adopted over 10% of the area can earn 187 million-US$ annually. RRR if adopted over existing practice on a large area would reduce environmental degradation with an enhanced income to small and marginal farmers.
Highlights
The rice–wheat system is one of the important food production systems in South Asia contributing to food security of the region [1]
Were found to be significant (P ≤ 0.01) when analyzed individually for few traits and their interaction effects were non-significant on all the studied traits except RWC which was significant in case of
In this paper we investigated the effect of rice residue retention, irrigation levels and foliar application of K on wheat grain yield (GY), AGBM, Harvest Index (HI), TPM, GrPMS, thousand grains weightlate (TGW), grains per spike (GPS), RWC, SPAD, water use efficiency (WUE), Net returns, and BC ratio
Summary
The rice–wheat system is one of the important food production systems in South Asia contributing to food security of the region [1]. This system is prevalent in the fertile, alluvial Indo-Gangetic Plains of India [2,3,4]. The involvement of rice residue burning in enhancing the air pollution in Northern India has been reported by several researchers [7,9,10,11,12]. Along with contributing to air pollution, residue burning leads to loss of approximately 80%–90% N, 25% of P, 20% of K and 50% of S present in Agronomy 2020, 10, 434; doi:10.3390/agronomy10030434 www.mdpi.com/journal/agronomy
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