Interest in conservation measures, including reduced tillage, zero tillage, and crop residue retention, is growing in major rice growing areas of the world; particularly in the Indo-Gangetic plains. Of late, research interest is increasing in India for a specialised method of cultivation known as natural farming, which aims at maintain the functional biodiversity of the farm with little or no use of external inputs. With the increasing water crisis at a global level, it became imperative to develop technologies that can reduce the water use, particularly in water-guzzling low land paddy, by developing alternate cultivation methods; direct seeded rice is one such technology. A two-year field experiment was carried out at two locations during 2019–2020 and 2020–2021 to find out the impact of different cultivation and varieties on the productivity and profitability of the rice–wheat cropping system. The experiments were conducted in split plot design, replicated thrice, with cultivation practices in the main plot and varieties of both wheat and rice in the sub plot. The results so obtained reveal that conventional tillage significantly out yielded other methods of cultivation in both the crops at both the locations, while significantly lower grain yield in both crops was observed from natural farming. Adoption of reduced tillage, zero tillage and natural farming reduced the grain yield of wheat by 4.6%, 10.9%, and 59.4% over conventional tillage, while the corresponding decline in grain yield of rice was 10.8%, 16.1%, and 34.0% with reduced tillage, zero tillage, and natural farming, respectively. Among the varieties tested, HPW 368 and Him Palam Lal Dhan 1 (HPR 2795) produced significantly higher grain yield of wheat and rice, respectively, at both the locations during both years. Conventional tillage among cultivation practices and HPW 368 and Him Palam Lal Dhan 1 (HPR 2795) among wheat and rice varieties also proved to be better in terms of various economic indicators, including gross return, net return, and ratio benefit cost ratio (B:C ratio).

A field experiment was undertaken at the Experimental Farm of Department of Agronomy of CSK Himachal Pradesh Krishi Vishvavidyalaya, Palampur (H.P.) during kharif 2019 to study the effect of different tillage system and varieties on yield of rice. The treatments consisted of three rice varieties (viz., HPR 1156, HPR 2656 and HPR 2795) which were tested under three tillage systems viz., conventional tillage, and minimum tillage without residue and minimum tillage with residue treatment. The trial was laid out in split plot design with tillage system in main plot and rice varieties in sub plot and was replicated thrice. Conventional tillage recorded taller plants (124.50 cm) and higher dry matter accumulation (858.49 g/m-2) which was followed by minimum tillage without residue. Among the varieties tested HPR 2795 recorded taller plants (128.31 cm) and higher dry matter accumulation (891.33 g/m-2) which was followed by HPR 2656. Higher value of AGR, CGR and RGR was recorded in conventional tillage and among the varieties; HPR 2795 resulted in higher growth indices.

Different tillage methods i.e. zero tillage, natural farming, reduced tillage and conventional tillage in combination with 3 rice varieties, viz. Sukara Dhan 1 (HPR 1156), Him Palam Dhan 1 (HPR 2656) and Him Palam Lal Dhan 1 (HPR 2795) were evaluated in terms of growth, yield attributes and yield of direct seeded rice at research farm of Chaudhary Sarwan Kumar Himachal Pradesh Krishi Vishvavidyalaya, Palampur, Himachal Pradesh during rainy (kharif) season of 2020 and 2021. The experiment, was laid out in split plot design with tillage options in main plot and cultivars in subplot and replicated thrice. Findings exhibits that the, conventional tillage recorded significantly higher grain, straw and biological yield followed by reduced tillage and zero tillage while significantly lower values of all these traits were observed in natural farming during both the years of experimentation. Significantly greater and lower yields recorded in conventional tillage and natural farming treatments were due to the significantly higher and lower values of different yield attributes including number of panicles/m2, number of grains/panicle, grain weight/panicle and 1000-grain weight, observed in the respective treatments. From the present investigation it can be concluded that conventional tillage resulted in higher yield attributes and yield as compared to natural farming while lower values of yield attributes and yield were recorded under natural farming. Among different rice cultivars Him Palam Lal Dhan 1 was found superior than Sukara Dhan 1 and Him Palam Dhan 1.

A field experiment was conducted during Kharif 2019 at the Experimental Farm of the Department of Agronomy of CSK Himachal Pradesh Krishi Vishvavidyalaya, Palampur (H.P.) to investigate the effect of different tillage systems and varieties on yield of rice. The treatments consist of three rice varieties (HPR 1156, HPR 2656 and HPR 2795) which were tested under three tillage systems viz., conventional tillage, and minimum tillage without residue and minimum tillage with residue retention. The experiment was set up in a split plot design, with the tillage system in the main plot and rice cultivars in the sub plots, and it was triple replicated. The texture of the soil at the test site was silty clay loam in texture, acidic in reaction and in terms of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, it was evaluated as medium. Significantly higher no. of panicles per meter square were observed in minimum tillage without residue though this treatment was at par with conventional tillage while significantly lower number of panicles m-2 were recorded with minimum tillage with residue retention. Significantly greater number of grains per panicle and panicle length were recorded in conventional tillage while minimum tillage with residue retention recorded lower values of number of grains per panicle and panicle length. Different tillage practices had no effect on the test weight of rice. Among different varieties tested, HPR 2656 recorded greater number of panicles per square meter which was at par with variety HPR 1156. Significantly higher number of grains per panicle and panicle length were recorded with HPR 2795 while the other two varieties were at par with each other. Rice variety HPR 1156 produced grains that had significantly greater test weight while the other two varieties (HPR 2795 and HPR 2656) were at par with each other with respect to this parameter. In terms of yield, conventional tillage produced much larger grain yield, straw yield, and biological yield and was at par with minimum tillage without residue. Among different varieties tested, HPR 2795 recorded much greater grain, straw and biological yields.

The South East Asian thrips, Thrips parvispinus (Karny) (Thripidae: Thysanoptera) was witnessed for the first time infesting onion (Allium cepa) crop in Haryana, India. This invasive pest is a looming to agricultural crops in the country owing to expanding host range over the time. The occurrence of Thrips parvispinus on economically important vegetable crop like onion in India is a serious economic implication and is a source of concern for a quarantine. A regular monitoring of this invasive thrips is the need of an hour as it may become a greater nuisance in the future.