Doubling of yield, income, and enhancing water productivity with conservation agriculture-based technologies

Abstract

The conventional production system has been facing serious challenges of soil and water degradation and declining profitability due to rising production cost in scarce irrigated areas of Farmers First Programme (FFP) project of Morena district of Madhya Pradesh. The conservation agriculture (CA)-based resource conserving technologies were demonstrated to overcome these problems. Results of CA-based innovative technological demonstrations indicated that precise land leveling (PLL) led to the improvement in grain yield of rainy season crops (pigeon pea, greengram, sesame, pearl millet and paddy) by 6.3-14.6% and of winter season crops (wheat, mustard and chick pea) by 13.2-17.8% as compared with traditionally leveled fields. Similarly, crops were established with zero tillage maximum with rainy season crops (5.0-9.9%) compared with conventional seeding practices. The crop established with PBBF was a maximum increase of rainy season crops (15.2-53.6%), whereas wheat grown after harvest of rainy season crop was increased by 6.4-8.8%, and mustard seed yield was increased by 11.9 and 17.7% of chick pea grown after harvesting of blackgram and greengram, respectively, as compared with conventional seeding methods. The study showed that the saving in cultivation cost and total water use, improvement in net benefits and water productivity of crops.