Few important soil management technologies for sustainable crop production – A review

In irrigated farming, although intensive agriculture has brought sustainable enhancement in production of food grains but it has threatened the environment safety and promoted the degradation and inefficient use of basic resources such as land, water and fertiliter. Ridge furrow and bed-furrow systems have emerged as few of the most promising sustainable crop management technologies which increased input use efficiency and crop production without environmental degradation. Ridge-furrow system was found suitable for enhancing the production of crops sensitive to water logging, for improving the productivity of poorly drained vertisoils, for checking the runoff and soil loss in erodible lands (1–3%) and for increasing the soil depth of shallow Alfisols. Besides, use of ridge-furrow system resulted in reduced water and chemical use. However, under ridge-furrow system mechanical sowing of closely spaced crops like wheat, gram and soybean and weed removal at advance stage were big problems. Hence Broad bed and furrow system (BBF) was developed for deep black cotton soils in medium rainfall regions where mechanical sowing by seed drill could be done. In medium to high rainfall regions of Vertisols, 6–15 m wide and 30 cm high beds alternating with 6 m wide sunken beds (Raised bed-Sunken bed system-RBSB) were found most appropriate for raising both upland and low land crops. Whereas in low rainfall regions of Vertisols, 1–2 m wide raised beds were recommended for improving the crop production. Both BBF and RBSB technologies worked well in Vertisols only, where lateral movement of water was appreciable. However, they were found unsuitable for medium and coarse textured solis of indogangetic plains where vertical movement predominate over horizontal movement. Research trial on use of bed planting system (also known as furrow irrigated reduced tillage bed planting-FIRBS) for growing soybean, wheat, maize and cotton in Yaqui valley of central Mexico and Indo-Gangetic plains of south Asia showed promising results in terms of increased input use efficiency and crop productivity.