Journal of Agriculture and Food Research (Jun 2023)
Effect of tillage and irrigation on growth and productivity in maize-wheat sequence
Abstract
The present study was conducted at experimental farm of Department of Organic Agriculture and Natural Farming, CSK HPKV, Palampur, during the year 2018–20 with the objectives of evaluating the effect of tillage and irrigation on soil moisture content, seed emergence, plant height and crop and water productivity and soil physical properties. The treatments comprised of viz., T1: No irrigation to maize and 6 cm irrigation to wheat grown with conventional tillage and natural farming (NF), T2: No irrigation to maize and 4 cm irrigation to wheat grown with conventional tillage and NF, T3: No irrigation to maize and 2 cm irrigation to wheat grown with conventional tillage and NF, T4: No irrigation to maize and wheat grown with conventional tillage and NF, T5: No irrigation to maize and wheat grown with minimum tillage + lantana mulch and NF, T6: No irrigation to maize + soybean and 6 cm irrigation to wheat + gram gown with conventional tillage grown and NF, T7: No irrigation to maize + soybean and wheat + gram grown with minimum tillage + lantana mulch and NF, T8: No irrigation to maize and 6 cm irrigation to wheat grown with conventional tillage and organic farming and T9: No irrigation to maize and 6 cm irrigation to wheat grown with conventional tillage and no manure application (Absolute control) were replicated four times in a randomized complete block design. The results indicated that the treatments with minimum tillage and mulch (T5 and T7) had higher soil moisture content, emergence rate index, plant height, yield and water use efficiency as compared to the conventional tillage treatments. The physical properties of soil such as porosity, water holding capacity and mean weight diameter were improved under T5 and T7 treatments. Further, it was observed that with decrease in irrigation water, there was decrease in soil moisture content, emergence rate index, plant height and yield. PCA explained 92.27% and 88.52% of the data variability in the maize and wheat respectively, which may indicate that the different properties were affected by different treatments. The moisture content at both depth was positively correlated with porosity and ERI. Also, the positive correlation was observed between MWD, plant height, WHC, water productivity and yield.
