Sustainability of Improved Management Practices of Dryland Agriculture in Western Madhya Pradesh

Previously developed sustainability indices suffer from non - inclusion of effect of amount and distribution of rainfall and were considered as independent of climatic effect. Under dryland farming the effect of rainfall on crops cannot be ignored while screening them for sustainability. In view of this, sustainability index should be made independent of rainfall effect. Hence, a statistical measure of sustainability index, which is a function of estimate of error derived from a regression of yield through rainfall, is used. The sustainability index is a ratio between differences of mean and standard error (detrend for rainfall) to the maximum-recorded yield during the period. The proposed procedure was utilized to arrive at the sustainable practices from the experimental data of AICRPDA, College of Agriculture. Indore. Any practice yielding Sustainability Index (SI) > 0.66 is considered as a recommendable component for production of a crop in a region and SI of 0.5 to 0.65 is considered as highly promising. A practice with SI < 0.33 is undependable. The INM, Low till farming strategy, growing of intercrops in place of sole cropping, use of rock phosphate along with FYM and biofertilizers, growing of aswagandha and safflower as rabi crops are the major recommendations emerged on the basis of sustainability index. Through this approach the sustainability index could be considered as a dependable measure for making recommendations in dryland agriculture.