Impact of conservation practices on crop water use and productivity in chickpea under middle Indo-Gangetic plains
2012
Mishra, J.P. | Praharaj, C.S. | Singh, K.K. | Kumar, Narendra
The Middle Indo-Gangetic Plains is one of the important domains of chickpea production in which the crop is grown in diverse production systems. Since the crop is predominantly grown under rainfed conditions, it experiences a deficit in soil moisture condition especially at its terminal growth stages causing low productivity. This is more pertinent during rabi season although the crop is having unique adaptive mechanisms to moisture stress. To mitigate the effect of moisture stress with improved agronomy under rainfed situation, the present study was carried out at Indian Institute of Pulses Research, Kanpur during rabi seasons of 2008–10. Resource conservation practices with tillage and mulching were evaluated on the productivity and water use efficiency of popular chickpea genotypes. Results showed that the contribution of deeper layers (30–60 cm) in the soil profile increased with the depth of tillage as was evident from different mulching and tillage treatments. The highest soil moisture depletion as measured through seasonal evapo-transpiration (ET) was recorded under no mulch and zero tillage in both the surface (0–30 cm) and sub-surface (30–60 cm) depths during both the years of study. Tillage practices could not influence seed yield of chickpea during both the years of study. Cultural mulch however, produced higher seed yield (1876 kg/ha) during 2008–09 while none of the mulching practices could produce difference in seed yield during 2009–10 due to optimum rainfall and its fairly well distribution. Amongst chickpea genotypes, ‘JG 16’ produced the highest seed yield of 1858 kg/ha during 2009–10 while ‘KWR 108’ in 2008–09 (1961 kg/ha). Water use efficiency (WUE) was the highest in deep tillage and cultural mulch during 2008–09; while conventional tillage and no mulch recorded higher WUE in 2009–10.
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