Sustainability, Productivity, Profitability and Soil Health With Conservation Agriculture-Based Sustainable Intensification of Oilseed Brassica Production System

Abstract

Conservation Agriculture (CA) practices getting space world-wide to answer many emerging challenges like; declining factor productivity, deteriorating soil health, water scarcity, climate change, and farm profitability and sustainability. Oilseed brassica (Indian mustard, Brassica juncea L.), a winter oilseed grown under rainfed agro-ecosystem vulnerable to low yields, high production cost, degrading soil and water quality, and climatic vagaries. The present study was undertaken on CA-based sustainable intensification of Indian mustard for enhancing inputs efficiencies, farm profitability and sustainability. Permanent beds with residue retention (PB+R) improved mustard equivalent yield (11.4%) and system grain yield (10.6%) compared to conventional tillage without residue (CT-R). Maize-mustard (Mz-M) increased system grain yield (142.9%) as well as mustard equivalent yield (60.7%) compared to fallow-mustard (F-M). Mz-M system under PB+R increased sustainable yield index (376.5%), production efficiency (177.2%), economic efficiency (94%) and irrigation water productivity (66%) compared to F-M under CT-R. PB+R increased soil organic carbon (SOC) stock at 0-15 cm (17.7%) and 15-30 cm (29.5%) soil depth compared to CT-R. Intensification of F-M system with green gram–mustard (GG-M) improved SOC at 0-15 cm (27.4%) and 15-30 cm (20.5%) compared to F-M. CA-based cluster bean-mustard/GG-M system increased N productivity, whereas, P and K productivity improved with Mz-M system compared to F-M under CT-R. Thus, CA-based Mz-M system should be out-scaled in the traditional rainfed fallow-mustard system to improve the farm production and income on holistic basis to make the country self-sufficient in edible oils.

Analysis on the Spatial and Temporal Differences of AEE and Its Potential Improvement in China Based on Strong Disposability

“…The second is the land, with the redundancy ratio exceeding 30% in 2016. It is necessary to reduce land input or improve the intensive use of other input factors to improve the land output rate [13] .…”

Contemporary nitrogen management in maize (Zea mays)–Indian mustard (Brassica juncea) cropping system for maximizing yield, water productivity and profitability

“…Despite being the third largest producer (11.3%) of rapeseed and Indian mustard [Brassica juncea (L.) Czern.] in the world, after Canada and China, India meets 60% of the domestic edible oil requirements through imports and is ranked the 7 th largest importer (Jat et al 2021). India imports edible oil worth more than USD 10.0 billion annually to meet the national requirement (Rathore et al 2022).…”