Influence of Different Moisture Conservation Practices and Crop Sequence on Direct Seeded Rice based Cropping System in Rainfed Ecosystem of Assam, India

Land configuration decides the effectiveness of crop management practices and major land configuration practice includes raised bed preparation, ridges and furrows, broad bed furrows etc. The farmers’ practice of sowing in flatbed without proper land configuration, leads to poor growth and development of crops. A large portion of crop residues is burnt by the farmers in the fields to clear the left-over straw and stubbles. Conservation agriculture involving crop residue management can give new direction for sustaining productivity. The development issue of rainfed agriculture assumes critical importance in India due to slow growth and its impact on livelihood security of rural poor in India. Changes in crop establishment method in rice have significant implications in performing farm operations like tillage, seedbed preparations, transplanting, weeding and other intercultural operations including water management. The current study aimed to study the BF methods as land configuration including crop residue management in rainfed eco system in direct seeded rice based cropping system.

In the field experiment during 2016–17 and 2017–18, different size of bed of Broad bed Furrow (BBF) including Flatbed was made manually consisting four replication. After final land preparation the experimental field was divided into four blocks and each block was divided in to six main plots to allocate the six soil moisture conservation practices randomly, for growing summer (direct seeded ahu rice), kharif (green gram) crops. The main plots were again divided in to four sub-plots to allocate the rabi crops randomly following a split-plot design. Incorporation of crop residues was done in the plots as per treatments.

The investigation resulted better performance of both the size of BBF beds as compared to flatbed method in respect of yield attributes and yield of the crops studied. Among the BBF, 60–30 cm size bed showed better than the BBF 120–30 cm size beds. The residue incorporation plots were shown comparatively better result than no residue incorporation treatments. The present study will be a contribution to the study of BBF particularly in pulse crops due to heavy rainfall received during kharif season in Assam.