Author(s):

Gopal Kumar, Ragini Kumari, Priyanka Kumari, Rakesh Kumar, Shweta Shambhavi, Sanjay Kumar and Rajeev Padbhushan

Abstract: A field study was conducted on the ongoing research project “Resource conservation technologies for stabilizing yield under different cropping system” of Bihar Agricultural University, Sabour, Bhagalpur (Bihar) initiated in the year 2011, to study the effect of conservation agriculture (CA)on soil properties, yield and nutrient uptake in maize crop under maize based cropping systems. To fulfill this study, the soil and plant samples were collected from these permanent CA plots which contains three main plots of various tillage practices viz. Zero tillage (ZT), Permanent raised bed (PB) and Conventional tillage (CT) and in sub-plot with three different cropping sequences viz. maize-maize (M-M), maize-wheat (M-W) and maize-chickpea (M-C) in a split plot design. Results showed that there was no significant effect of tillage practices and cropping system on soil pH and electrical conductivity (EC) but the management performed in the CA plots improved soil organic carbon (SOC) content, cation exchange capacity (CEC) and nutrient availability in ZT and M-C over other tillage practices and cropping systems. The highest yield gain for tillage practices was in ZT (297 Kg ha^-1) over PB (173 Kg ha^-1) as compared with CT and for cropping systems M-C (197 Kg ha^-1) over M-M (123 Kg ha^-1) as compared with M-C. Uptake of the nutrients was more in ZT and M-C over other tillage practices and cropping systems. Overall, it can be concluded that ZT and M-C was best tillage practice and cropping system, respectively as compared with other tillage practices and cropping systems.

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