Efficiency of Factor Productivity and Effect of Individual Input of Production on Growth, Yield and Economics of Soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merrill] Production

Abstract

Background: In the face of limited resources and changing climatic conditions, a major challenge for agriculturists is to ensure food security while addressing the issue of an ever-growing population. In India, the average productivity of soybean is low as compared to world average due to lack of improved agronomic practices, less importance and mostly grown under rain-fed condition. To bridge this gap, factors of production determining the per-unit production plays a crucial role in crop production. Therefore, in order to identify/evaluate the partial factor productivity and their contribution for better crop growth and individual input use efficiency study was undertaken. Methods: The field experiments were conducted during Kharif 2020, 2021 and 2022 in Randomized Block Design with seven crop management practices. To know the efficiency of individual crop management practices on growth, yield parameters, yield, economics and output efficiency in terms of partial factor productivity and agronomy efficiency of applied nutrients. Result: Three-year results concluded that, soybean grown with full package recorded significantly higher seed yield (2277 kg ha-1) over full package excluding weed management (1889 kg ha-1) and full package excluding RDF (2023 kg ha-1). The yield gap was higher with omission of weed management (388 kg ha-1) and omission of RDF (254 kg ha-1). Further, net returns and crop out-put efficiency in terms of partial factor productivity and agronomic efficiency was higher with full package over the omission of the practice. Thus it can be concluded that, for achieving higher productivity, profitability and agronomic efficiency of applied nutrients under full package comprising all crop management practices can be adopted over the years in Northern Transition Zone of Karnataka.