Productivity and economics of soybean (Glycine max) as influenced by different tillage practices and phosphorus fertilization under conservation agriculture

Abstract

Based on our findings, it can be concluded that soybean crop can be successfully raised with conservation agricultural (CA) practices with a reasonably high level of productivity and profitablity. The higher productivity and profitability was recorded under conservation agricultural practices involving zero-tillage-bed with wheat crop residue of 3.0 t/ha. The yield improvement of soybean with ZT–B + R was 16.2%, 10.96% and 5.3% compared with CT–R, ZT–R and ZT + R, respectively. The significantly highest gross (65000 ₹/ha), net returns (35100 ₹/ha) and B:C ratio (2.18) were obtained with ZT–B + R. Among phosphorus fertilization practices, soybean responded well up to 80 kg P2O5/ha (34.5 kg P/ha) as basal application with increase in crop productivity and profitablity. Yield improvement with 80 kg P2O5/ha was 21.6% and 13.9% compared to 0 and 40 kg P2O5/ha, respectively. However, application of 120 kg P2O5/ha (52.5 kg P/ha) didn’t show any significant increment in productivity and profitablity over 80 kg P2O5/ha.

Keywords

• Conservation agriculture
• Economics
• Phosphorous fertilization
• Soybean
• Tillage
• Yield