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PRINT ISSN : 2319-7692
Online ISSN : 2319-7706 Issues : 12 per year Publisher : Excellent Publishers Email : editorijcmas@gmail.com / submit@ijcmas.com Editor-in-chief: Dr.M.Prakash Index Copernicus ICV 2018: 95.39 NAAS RATING 2020: 5.38 |
A long-term field experiment on conservation agriculture (CA) is continuing since 2008 at the research farm of the ICAR-Indian Institute of Maize Research (IIMR), New Delhito evaluate the impact of twelve combinations of tillage practices (03) and irrigated intensive maize-based systems (04) on Walkley and Black C (WBC) and dehydrogenase activity of a sandy loam soil in north-western Indo-Gangetic plains of India. The CA-based tillage practices consist of zero-till(ZT), permanently raised beds (PB) and conventional tillage (CT) in main-plots and four intensive irrigated maize-based crop rotations (MWMb: maize-wheat-mungbean, MCS: maize-chickpea-Sesbania, MMuMb: maize-mustard-mungbean, MMS: maize-maize-Sesbania) in sub-plots. Results revealed that across the soil depths, WBC content of different tillage practices and diversified cropping systems varied from 0.55 to 0.40%. The CA-based practices resulted in higher WBC over CT, and the value decreased with soil depth. The DHA registered 49.2 and 50.1% higher in 0-5 and 5-15 cm soil depth under PB over CT, respectively which showed improvement in soil health and SOC due to crop diversification. Thus, our long-term study suggests that PB and ZT with diversified maize-based systems i.e. MCS and MWMb can be advocated for restoration and improvement in soil health of light textured soils of north-western India.