A field experiment was undertaken to evaluate the effect of conservation agriculture (CA) based management on soil biological properties, and on fungal diversity and abundance after 5 years of continuous cultivation. Treatments included four crop managements viz., conventional tillage (CT) rice-wheat (CT-RW; CT based), conventional tillage rice-zero tillage wheat and mungbean (CTR-ZTWMb; partially CA based), zero tillage rice-wheat-mungbean (ZT-RWMb; full CA based), and zero tillage maize-wheatmungbean (ZT-MWMb; full CA based). Full rice, maize, and mungbean crop residue and anchored wheat residue were recycled in CA-based managements, while CT-based management was without any residue. Full CA-based management (ZT-MWMb) recorded 43% higher organic carbon, 56% microbial biomass carbon, 70% microbial biomass nitrogen, 73% phosphatase activity, and 40% β-glucosidase activity, than CT-RW management. Ascomycota (55-74%) was the dominant phylum followed by Basidiomycota and Glomeromycota (0 to 3%); abundance of these phyla varied amongst managements. Ascomycota abundance was in order of CT-RW< CTR-ZTWMb< ZT-RWMb< ZT-MWMb, however, Basidiomycota and Glomeromycota did not follow any trend. Diversity indices such as species richness, evenness and Shannon-Wiener diversity index were in the order: ZT-MWMb> ZT-RWMb> CTR-ZTWMb> CT-RW. This study clearly showed that CA with all three proven principles (no-tillage, residue retention and crop diversification) in maize-wheat-mungbean system resulted in higher microbial activities, fungal diversity and species richness compared to other cereal based management systems.
Indian fenugreek (Trigonella foenum-graecum L.) varieties were biometrically studied for seed yield and yield contributing traits to assess genetic variability, character association and genetic divergence. Highly significant differences between varieties for all the studied traits were observed. Pooled results illustrated high estimates of PCV along with GCV for number of branches per plant, test weight, number of pods per plant, number of nodules per plant, plant height and seed yield per plant. High heritability along with genetic advance was recorded for plant height and test weight. Association studies showed highly significant positive correlation and high direct effect of test weight, plant height and number of pods per plant on seed yield. Diversity analysis grouped the set of 17 varieties into two clusters and there was lack of parallelism between genetic and geographic diversities. Intra cluster distance was the highest in cluster I than cluster II. Test weight (37.50%) contributed the maximum to total divergence, followed by plant height.
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