Sustainability of tillage practiced for rainfed crops under different soil and climatic situation in India

Among different agricultural operations, tillage, fertilizer and weed management are more important than all other aspects for crop growth and higher productivity under rainfed conditions. Different implements are used for tillage, sowing, fertilizer application, interculture and weed removal, furrow making for soil and moisture conservation, harrowing, land smoothening and other operations. They are being used as either tractor drawn or animal drawn implements under different situations. The data of 48 field experiments conducted during 1999 to 2003 under on-station conditions for assessing the tillage requirement of 5 cereals. 2 oil seeds and one pulse crops under different soil and climatic conditions at 13 centres of All India Coordinated Research Project for Dryland Agriculture (A1CRPDA) have been compiled in this paper. Based on the data generated from field experiments with conventional tillage, low tillage + hand weeding and low tillage + herbicide application, a detailed statistical assessment of superiority of tillage practices has been explored. The sustainability of tillage practices has been evaluated based on the procedure developed by Vittal et al., (2002).

The study indicated that conventional tillage was superior at Bangalore for finger millet under semi-arid alfisols; pearl millet under semi-arid vertisols of Solapur and arid inceptisols of Agra; rice under moist sub-humid oxisols of Phulbani and dry sub-humid inceptisols of Varanasi; maize under dry sub-humid inceptisols of Rakh Dhiansar; wheat under moist sub-humid inceptisols of Ballowal Saunkhri; and soybean under semi-arid vertisols of Indore. Low tillage + herbicide application was found to be superior for rice under per humid oxisols of Ranchi; maize under dry sub-humid inceptisols of Ballowal Saunkhri; soybean under moist sub-humid vertisols of Rewa; and cluster bean under semi-arid aridisols of Dantiwada. Low tillage + hand weeding was found to be superior for pearl millet under semi-arid aridisols of Hisar; and groundnut under semi-arid alfisols of Anantapur.