Effect of Conservation Agriculture-based Crop Establishment Options on Rice Growth in Rice-wheat System

Abstract

Rice accounts for over 40% of India's total crop production, thereby reinforces the country's food security. However, rice production in India faces several challenges like high consumption of water, labour, and energy, which are becoming scarcer and more costly. Keeping above facts in view, an experiment was conducted during Kharif season of 2021and 2022 at the Agricultural Research Farm, Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi to evaluate the effect of different conservation agriculture-based crop establishment options on growth of rice under rice-wheat system. The field experiment was arranged in a completely randomized block design having four replications and six different crop establishment methods, namely CE1: Conventional till puddled transplanted rice - Conventional till wheat (no residue retention/incorporation), CE2: Conventional till puddled transplanted rice - Conventional till wheat - Conventional till mung bean (Rice & Wheat residue removal, full mungbean residue incorporation), CE3: Conventional till direct seeded rice - Zero till wheat (anchored residue retentionof Rice), CE4: Conventional till direct seeded rice - Zero till wheat - Zero till mung bean (anchored residue retention of Riceand full Mungbean residue incorporation), CE5: Zero till direct seeded rice – Zero till wheat (anchored residue retention of Rice and Wheat), and CE6: Zero till direct seeded rice – Zero till wheat – Zero till mung bean (anchored residue retention of Rice and Wheat and full mungbean residue retention). The CE6 treatment (ZTR–ZTW–ZTMB) demonstrated significant superiority over the conventional CE1 (CTR–CTW) method across all assessed growth parameters. Specifically, CE6 resulted in an increase of up to 26% in plant height, 33% in number of tillers per m2, and nearly 16% in the leaf area index during the early growth stage of rice.