Use of Mulches in Various Tillage Conditions Reduces the Greenhouse Gas Emission—an Overview

Global warming is one of the most prominent challenges in the present era. Global warming is caused by the increased concentration of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere and leads to a phenomenon widely known as “greenhouse effect.” Increased food demands necessitate amid global efforts to increase crop production that ensure food security and also protect environment and natural resources through reduced GHG emissions. Global warming is the continual rise in the temperature of the earth’s atmosphere due to the high amount of heat received from the sun striking the earth because of the trapped heat in the atmosphere rather than radiated into space. One of the major issues due to climate change is the emission of greenhouse gases, which has drastically increased the earth’s temperature. There are major threats to crop productivity and food security due to the rise in the earth’s temperature and climate change. In order to overcome the harmful effects of climate change, various management strategies are adopted to increase crop productivity, which include use of cover crops, limiting the use of tillage practices in the farming system and use of inorganic fertilizer, promotion of intercropping with short term crops, use of high yielding and resistant cultivars to abiotic stresses. Changes in soil carbon stocks, the release of nitrous oxide (N₂O) and methane (CH₄) from fertilized soil have been influenced by farm management practices. Conservation tillage offers many benefits, including water conservation and reducing soil erosion. In no tillage farming systems, the emission of nitrous oxide was observed to be significantly higher under the varying levels of soil aeration as compared to the poorly aerated soil of conventional farming systems. When compared to inorganic fertilizer systems, the importance of solid organic manures in maintaining the concentration of soil organic carbon through regular carbon input is well known. This review focuses solely on soil emission processes and the variables that influence them. It examines soil emission studies involving the most important mulch types and climate zones, as well as important soil emission measuring systems. We examined and evaluated the different possible options and found that modifying tillage permutations and irrigation patterns, managing organic and fertilizer inputs, selecting suitable cultivar, and cropping regime can mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.