Identification of environment friendly tillage implement as a strategy for energy efficiency and mitigation of climate change in semiarid rainfed agro ecosystems

Abstract

Agriculture and associated sectors have a significant impact on environment such as GHG emissions, depletion of mineral and fossil resources. Agriculture contributes 25% of global greenhouse gas emissions of which seed bed preparation has a significant share. It contributes 23–44% of total CO2 emissions due to fossil fuel consumption and soil organic carbon oxidation. Increasing consciousness on environment and food security has created interest towards low-energy agriculture and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Hence identification of a primary tillage implement can be a powerful strategy to mitigate the climate change through reduced fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) for cleaner agricultural production and to improve the environment quality. Therefore, the present study focuses on identifying the energy efficient and environment friendly primary tillage implement by analyzing the energy and carbon efficiency indicators. The objective of the present study was to assess the effect of commonly used primary and secondary tillage implements in single or in combination for seed bed preparation in developing countries like Cultivator (CV), Cultivator followed by Disc Harrow (CVH), Disc Plough (DP), Disc Plough followed by Disc Harrow (DH), Mould Board Plough (MP), Mould Board Plough followed by Disc Harrow (MPH), Rotovator (RO), Bullock Drawn Plough (BP), Bullock Drawn Harrow (BH), No Tillage (NT) on energy conservation, environment impact and global warming potential. The aim of the study was to identify climate smart primary tillage implement for clean production technology to improve the environmental quality in semi-arid rainfed conditions of India. CV, MP and RO recorded higher soil based greenhouse gas emissions. NT and Animal Drawn Implements recorded lower soil-based greenhouse gas emissions. Fuel consumption-based CO2 emissions for preparatory cultivation and sowing were found to be 92, 81, 60, 60 and 40 per cent lower in BP, BH, tractor drawn CV, DH, RO respectively as compared to MPH RO and MPH f recorded higher total CO2 equivalents over other tillage implements used in the present experiment. Among the different methods, reduced tillage with DH recorded higher energy use efficiency and carbon efficiency. Our study indicated that primary tillage implement with minimum soil disturbance and lower number of operations is an ideal environment friendly practice for mitigation of climate change as it recorded low Global Warming Potential (GWP), energy and cost of cultivation with minimum yield reduction.