ISSN: 0973-7510

E-ISSN: 2581-690X

R.K. Naresh1, Raj K. Gupta2, M.L. Jat3, S.P. Singh4, Ashish Dwivedi1 , S.S. Dhaliwal5, Vineet Kumar4, Lalit Kumar6, Onkar Singh4, Vikrant Singh1, Ashok Kumar4 and R.S. Rathore7
1Department of Agronomy; Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel University of Agriculture & Technology, Meerut – 250 110, India.
2Team Leader, Research Station Developments , Borlaug Institute for South Asia, CIMMYT New Delhi, India.
3International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT), New Delhi, India.
4Department of Soil Science, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel University of Agriculture & Technology, Meerut – 250 110, India.
5Department of Soil Science, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana (Pub.), India.
6Indian Institute of Farming System Research, Modipuram, Meerut-250110, India.
7Uttar Pradesh Council of Agricultural Research, Lucknow, India.
J. Pure Appl. Microbiol., 2016, 10 (3): 1987-2002
© The Author(s). 2016
Received: 17/04/2016 | Accepted: 22/05/2016 | Published: 30/09/2016
Abstract

Soil organic carbon is considered to be of central importance in maintaining soil quality. We assessed the adoption of different combinations of tillage, crop residue and irrigation on soil organic carbon (SOC) dynamics in different sized soil aggregates and also on crop yield after 4 years in wheat monoculture field plot experiment in a sandy loam soil under subtropical climatic conditions. Results showed that tillage crop residue and irrigation significantly increased water stable aggregates and had profound effects in increasing the mean weight diameter as well as the formation of macro-aggregates, which were the highest in both surface (14.5 & 12.5%) and subsurface (13.4 & 12.1%) soil layers under FIRB and ZT with application rice straw and I5 treatments after 3 years. Hence, better aggregation was found with FIRB with 6t rice straw + I5 where macro-aggregates were greater than 30% of total soil mass. The same treatment also enhanced the labile C and N fractions such as water soluble C, particulate and light fraction organic matter from 7.1 mg·kg-1 conventional tillage to 17.6 mg·kg-1 in surface layer and from 6.5 to 16.3 mg·kg-1 in subsurface layer after 3 years leading to the 42% and 39% higher water soluble C stocks over CT in 0-15 cm soil layers, respectively. The changes in water soluble C stocks after 4 years were 45% and 40%. WUE increased as mulching increased for the I2, I3, and I4 treatments, but not for the I5 treatment. We conclude that variants of conservation tillage increase SOC stock in the sandy loam soils of subtropical climatic conditions of western U. P., India and are therefore more sustainable practices than those currently being used.

Keywords

Conservation tillage; Rice straw; Water Stable Aggregates; Soil organic carbon, Water use.

Article Metrics

Article View: 1507

Share This Article

Journal Tools

© The Author(s) 2016. Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License which permits unrestricted use, sharing, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.