Description

Poster. ABSTRACT: The North Central Plateau zone of Odisha has an undulating topography and under high rainfall zone of the state. The soils of this area are subjected to various kinds of soil degradation. The farmers of this zone are traditionally growing maize as the only rainfed crop. Conservation agriculture practice involving minimum tillage, legume based intercropping and a follow up cover crop has been thought of as the best possible long term solution for this region to maintain the natural resources and environmental quality. To study the impact of maize based cropping system with cover crops under conventional and minimum tillage practices, a field experiment was conducted on the loamy soils of Regional Research and Technology Transfer Station, OUAT at Kendujhar district during 2011-12. Conventional (CT) and minimum (MT) tillage with maize (M) and maize + cowpea (M+C) were taken in main plots during kharif and horsegram (H), mustard (M) and fallow (F) in sub-plots during rabi. Soil samples were collected before and after kharif and rabi to study the impact of the treatments on soil BD, pH, OC and available N, P, K, Ca and Mg. The yield and nutrient uptake by crops were correlated with the soil properties. The practice of MT reduced the BD in the tune of 0.007 Mgm-3 and increased the pH (0.2 units), OC (0.29 g kg-1), available indices viz. N (4.5 kg ha-1), P (0.06 kg ha-1), K (4.8 kg ha-1), ca{0.46 c mol (p+) kg-1} and Mg {0.32 c mol (p+) kg-1} over CT after harvest of kharif crops. Growing horsegran (H) as cover crop during rabi, reduced the BD (0.001 Mgm-3) and increased pH (0.01 units), OC (0.03 g kg-1) and available nutrient viz. N (0.5 kg ha-1), P (0.02 kg ha-1), K (0.2 kg ha-1), Ca { 0.02 c mol (p+) kg-1} and Mg {0.03 c mol (p+) kg -1} over mustard (M) as cover crop. Maximum uptake of N (150 kg ha-1) and P (17.2 kg ha-1) was observed in CT-M+C-H where as the highest uptake of K (123.8 kg ha-1) was obtained in CT-M+C-M treatment. Though maximum maize equivalent yield of 85.8 q ha-1 was obtained from CT-M+C-M treatment in the first year, a slow and gradual improvement in soil properties were observed by practice of minimum tillage with maize + cowpea intercrop followed by horsegram as cover crop.

Abstract published in the proceedings of the77th Annual Convention of Indian Society of Soil Science and National Seminar on Developments in Soil Science