Study of Micro-irrigation and Tillage Practices on Quality and Productivity of Wheat Crop

Abstract

Wheat has greatest importance in fc-od sec1,.1rity of the world. The global food production must increase by 70 to 100 percent by the year 2050, if we are to adequately feed a global population of nine billion people at that time. Though India has the largest irrigated area in the world, the coverage of irrigation is only about 40 percent of the gross cropped area as of today. One of the main reasons for the low coverage of irrigation is the pre•5ominant use of flood (conventional) method of irrigation, where water use eff icieney is very low due to various reasons. One of the demand managemEmt strategies introduced relatively recently to control water consumption in Indian at)riculture is micro irrigation (MI), which includes mainly drip and sprinkle·r irriga.:ion method. Also multiple challenges associated with plow based conventional production practices in ricewheat rotation including declining factor productivity, soil health deterioration, shrinking farm profits due to increasing en·~rgy and labour costs, an emerging irrigation water crisis and recent challenges of climate change are leading to a major threat to food security of South Asia. PotentiHI solutions to address the~e issues include a shift from intensive tilla~1e based practices to conservation agriculture (reduced or no tillage) based crop establishment techniques. A field experiment was conducted to study ·the effect of micro-irrigation and tillage practices on wheat crop water us•; effideflcy, crop productivity and nutritional quality. The study was conducted at Chirrori farm of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel University of A!~riculture and Technology, Meerut (U.P.) with five irrigation techniques and two tillage methods. The main plots in the study included five irrigation techniques namely sprinkler, drip, chaplin drip, LEWA and conventional flooding and sub-plot with tillage treatments as reduced and zero tillage along with one control wheat broadcast seeding flood irrigation method. The study revealed that micro-irrigation systems saves irrigation water in a tune of 42.5% and improves the water use efficiency by almost 60% than flood irrigation technique. The drip irrigation technique yield 22% more from broadcast and flood irrigation method. The .micro-irrigation and zero tillage system also enhance the wheat productivity by 22%, by improving number of effective tillers and 1000 grain weight. The study also revealed that micro-irrigation system improves the wheat grain nutritional quality by improving the protein content. The zero tillage performs better than reduced tillage under different micro-irrigation systems. Overall, micro-irrigation and zero tillage systems help in enhancing the net income in wheat crop . . The LEWA and chapin system still need much refinement for being applicable at the fielclscaiH. The study also suggest that detailed studies should be carried out on a medium- to long-term basis to study their impact on soil and grain nutritional quality