Author(s):

Devendra Kumar, UD Awasthi, PN Yadav, SK Uttam, RP Singh and Raj Kumar

Abstract: A field experiment was conducted during two consecutive years of kharif 2015-16 and 2016-17 at Soil Conservation and Water Management Farm of the C. S. Azad University of Agriculture and Technology, Kanpur to find out the effect of cropping systems, and moisture conservation practices on moisture use efficiency, splash loss and soil studies of crops under rainfed condition. The soil of experimental field was sandy loam in texture with pH 7.6, 0.38% organic carbon, 0.027% total N, 172.1 kg ha^-1 available N, 18.2 kg ha^-1 available P₂O₅ and 182.2 kg ha^-1 available K₂O. The field capacity, wilting point and bulk density were 18.6%, 6.2% and 1.35 Mg m^-3, respectively. The treatments comprised of 6 cropping systems i.e. (i) Sole pigeonpea at 60cm by regular sowing (ii) Sole pigeonpea paired 40/80 (iii) Sole sorghum at 45 cm by regular sowing (iv) Sole urdbean at 45 cm by regular sowing (v) Pigeonpea + sorghum - paired sowing. 40/80 and (vi) Pigeonpea + urdbean - paired sowing40/80 ; 3 moisture conservation practices i.e. (i) Control (ii) Ridging and furrowing in between the crop rows after three weeks of sowing and (iii) Weeding and hoeing once at 35 DAS the crop rows were tested in Split plot design with 3 replications during the course of investigation envisages. Results obtained that the moisture studies and soil studies of individual crop depressed in additive intercropping where depression was more in sorghum than blackgram. Moreover, total moisture use, consumptive water use and moisture use efficiency were also found to be the highest, while the lowest derived from the sole sorghum. Simultaneously, maximum splash loss was observed under sole pigeonpea paired sowing and minimum under sole blackgram treatment. In addition, total moisture use, moisture use efficiency was also noticed higher, but splash loss was lower. The higher splash loss was observed under conventional practice over ridging and furrowing practice during both the years of experimentation.

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