Elsevier

Field Crops Research

Volume 155, January 2014, Pages 233-244
Field Crops Research

Precision nutrient management in conservation agriculture based wheat production of Northwest India: Profitability, nutrient use efficiency and environmental footprint

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fcr.2013.09.001Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Various nutrient management strategies were evaluated under NT and CT based wheat production.

  • SSNM based on Nutrient expert® increased yield and economic profitability than state recommended and farmers’ practice of nutrient management.

  • SSNM and NT system had lower GWP than CT system and farmer's fertilization practice, respectively.

Abstract

In the high-yielding wheat production systems in Northwest (NW) Indo-Gangetic Plains of India, intensive tillage operations and blanket fertilizer recommendations have led to high production costs, decreased nutrient use efficiency, lower profits and significant environmental externalities. No-tillage (NT) has been increasingly adopted in this region to reduce costs and increase input use efficiency. But, optimal nutrient management practices for NT based wheat production are still poorly understood. Opportunities exist to further enhance the yield, profitability, and resource use efficiency of NT wheat through site-specific nutrient management (SSNM).

On-farm trials were conducted in seven districts of Haryana, India for two consecutive years (2010–11 and 2011–12) to evaluate three different approaches to SSNM based on recommendations from the Nutrient Expert® (NE) decision support system in NT and conventional tillage (CT) based wheat production systems. Performance of NE based recommendations was evaluated against current state recommendations and farmers’ practices for nutrient management. Three SSNM treatments based on NE based recommendation were (1) ‘NE80:20’ with 80% N applied at planting and 20% at second irrigation (2) ‘NE33:33:33’ with N split as 33% basal, 33% at Crown Root Initiation (CRI) and 33% at second irrigation; and (3) ‘NE80:GS’ with N split as 80% basal and further application of N based on optical sensor (Green Seeker™)-guided recommendations. Yield, nutrient use efficiency and economic profitability were determined following standard agronomic and economic measurements and calculations. Cool Farm Tool (CFT), an empirical model to estimate greenhouse gases (GHGs) from agriculture production, was used to estimate GHG emissions under different treatments.

Wheat grain and biomass yield were higher under NT in 2010–11 but no difference was observed in 2011–12. The three NE-based nutrient management strategies increased yield, nutrient use efficiency as well as net return as compared to state recommendation and farmers’ fertilization practice. Global warming potential (GWP) of wheat production was also lower with NT system as compared to CT system and NE-based nutrient managements as compared to farmers’ fertilization practice. State recommended nutrient management had similar GWP as NE-based nutrient managements except NE80:GS in which GWP was the lowest. Results suggest that no-tillage system along with site-specific approaches for nutrient management can increase yield, nutrient use efficiency and profitability while decreasing GHG from wheat production in NW India.

Introduction

Wheat (Triticum aestivum L) is the most important cereal crop and stands next to rice in India. The area under wheat in India is over 29 million hectares (M ha) which is about 24% of the total area under food grains (Majumdar et al., 2013). It is the staple food and meets about 61% of the protein requirement of India. Therefore, assured supply of wheat is essential for food security of the country. Current production is sufficient to meet the wheat demand of India, but the country has to increase wheat production from 93 Mt per annum at present to 105 Mt per annum by 2025 to meet the increasing demand (Prasad, 2011). As no additional land is available for wheat area expansion, this increase in wheat production has to come through increased yield per unit of production area. However, the production data for wheat in India shows no significant increase in productivity over last ten years (2000–2010) (Fertilizer Statistics, 2010–11). Various factors may be responsible for stagnating wheat yields in NW India such as late planting, inappropriate crop establishment, inadequate and imbalance nutrient management, and degrading soil health. Growing labour and water shortages, increasing cost of fuel, changing climatic conditions are likely to further affect the productivity of wheat adversely (Gathala et al., 2011, Saharawat et al., 2010).

Traditionally, wheat is grown in the winter season following rice. Farmers typically perform multiple tillage operations after rice harvest to prepare field for wheat planting. The intensive tillage contributes to an increased cost of cultivation leading to decreased profitability (Chhokar et al., 2007, Ladha et al., 2009). Increased use of machinery and fuel for repeated tillage operations also emits large amount of greenhouse gases (GHGs) into the atmosphere. The use of blanket nutrient management recommendations in India has led to low nutrient use efficiencies, lowered profits and increased environmental problems (Pampolino et al., 2012a). Nutrient recommendations in India are based upon crop response data averaged over large geographic areas and do not take into account the spatial variability in indigenous nutrient supplying capacity of soils (Majumdar et al., 2013). Blanket fertilizer application, therefore, results into under-fertilization in some cases and over-fertilization in other. Surveys in the Indo-Gangetic Plains (IGP) revealed that farmers often apply greater than recommended rates of fertilizer N and P, but ignore the sufficient application of potassium and other secondary and micro-nutrients (Singh et al., 2005). Such unbalanced and inadequate use of nutrients can decrease the nutrient use efficiency and profitability and may increase environmental risks associated with loss of unutilized nutrient through emission or leaching. This further increases the agriculture's share to total GHGs emissions. Therefore, traditional practices of wheat production need refinement to produce more food with less production costs and minimal emissions of GHGs through efficient use of land, labour, nutrient, water and other agro-chemicals.

Recently, conservation agriculture (CA), defined as minimal soil disturbance and permanent organic soil cover combined with efficient and economically viable rotations, has emerged as an important cropping system management strategy to address many of the pressing challenges confronting intensified wheat systems in NW India. NT has been widely adopted by farmers in wheat production, particularly in NW India, primarily to facilitate early planting of wheat in areas where rice is harvested late, to lower production cost and increase yield so as to increase profitability (Chhokar et al., 2007, Jat et al., 2009a, Jat et al., 2009b, Saharawat et al., 2010). With the development of planting equipment that can handle loose straw left in field after combine harvesting of rice and drill seed and fertilizer directly through the residues at appropriate depth (e.g. Turbo happy seeder), farmers are also retaining previous crop residue and moving towards full conservation agriculture based wheat system (Sidhu et al., 2007, Sharma et al., 2012). However, optimal nutrient management practices for wheat under NT with varied levels of surface residues are poorly understood. An opportunity exists to further enhance the yield, profitability, and nutrient use efficiency of these systems through SSNM. SSNM captures the spatial and temporal variability in soil fertility in smallholder production system and provides an approach to “feeding” crops with all the required nutrients based on crop's needs and thus improves the crop yield (Das et al., 2009, Tiwari et al., 2006) and nutrient use efficiency (IPNI, 2013).

On-farm participatory research was conducted in NW Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP) of India to evaluate SSNM under two contrasting tillage systems (NT and CT). We hypothesized that optimized nutrient management through site-specific approaches would increase yield, improve nutrient use efficiency, enhance the profitability and reduce environmental footprint of wheat production in NW India.

Section snippets

Study site

The study was conducted in seven districts (Karnal, Kurukshetra, Kaithal, Ambala, Sonepat, Panipat and Yamunanager) of Haryana, India (29°07′15′ N to 30°08′15 N, 75°02′20′ E to 77°04′10′ E). Fig. 1. shows the locations of study area in the IGP of NW India.

Site characteristics

The climate of the study area is semi-arid with mean annual rainfall varying from 650 mm to 970 mm, about 80% of which is received between June to September. The study area experiences temperature extremes across the year with daily minimum

Total biomass and grain yield

The tillage system resulted in significant differences in grain and total above-ground biomass yield in 2010–11 but not in 2011–12 crop-years (Table 4). But, nutrient management strategies resulted in significant differences in grain and above-ground biomass and yield in both the years. However, interaction effect of tillage systems and nutrient management strategies were not significant.

Irrespective of tillage systems and nutrient management strategies, grain and biomass yield was higher in

Crop productivity and economic profitability

Smaller overall grain and biomass yield in 2010–11 than in 2011–12 (Table 5) was mainly due to late planting by 7–15 days (see materials and methods: section 2.5) and higher temperature during grain filling period in 2010–11. Both maximum and minimum air temperature between 15 March and 30 March were higher in 2010–11 season than in 2011–12 season (Fig. 7). Higher minimum temperature reduces biomass by increasing maintenance respiration (Bunce, 2007) and grain yield (Gupta et al., 2010).

Both CT

Conclusion

The aim of this study was to evaluate individual and interactive effects of tillage and precision nutrient management options for wheat yield, profitability, nutrient use efficiency and GHG emission in intensive wheat systems of NW India. Grain yield did not differ between tillage systems in normal year but NT system yielded more in the year in which air temperature was higher during grain filling period indicating NT as more resilient wheat production system under terminal heat stress.

Acknowledgements

Support and cooperation of the participating farmers of Haryana, India is highly appreciated. This study was conducted as a partnership project between International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT) and International Plant Nutrition Institute (IPNI) and further analysis of the data and production of this paper was supported by CGIAR Research Programme (CRP) on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS).

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