Indian Journal of Dryland Agricultural Research and Development

A field experiment was conducted to assess the effect of different in-situ moisture conservation practices on plant water status, soil moisture storage; yield attributes and yield in rainfed maize-wheat cropping system at AICRP on Dryland Agriculture experimental farm, Ballowal Saunkhri during 2016-17 and 2017-18. The experiment included five treatments viz. deep ploughing, planting on beds 67.5 cm apart with plant to plant spacing of 18 cm, ridge sowing at 60 cm x 20 cm, conservation furrow method (after planting 4 rows at 60 cm apart 5^th row is skipped) and flat sowing at 60 cm x 20 cm. Moisture conservation practices maintained higher relative leaf water content and leaf area index and also stored higher profile soil moisture for succeeding wheat crop as compared to flat sowing. In maize, in-situ moisture conservation practices - ridge planting, conservation furrow planting, bed planting and deep ploughing resulted in significant increase in yield of maize over flat sowing with a respective increase of 18.1, 16.2, 11.6 and 7.7 per cent. The yield of succeeding wheat crop also improved significantly in ridge planting and conservation furrow planting plots by 19 per cent and 15.7 per cent respectively over flat sowing. Highest system productivity was recorded in ridge planting (7131 kg ha⁻¹) followed by conservation furrow method (6906 kg ha⁻¹) which gave additional income of Rs 24,056 ha⁻¹ and Rs. 19,656 ha⁻¹ respectively over flat sowing.