Tillage, Crop Establishment, and Weed Management for Improving Productivity, Nutrient Uptake, and Soil Physico-chemical Properties in Soybean-wheat Cropping System

The effect of tillage (conventional and zero tillage), crop establishment (raisedbed and flatbed), and weed management practices (herbicide alone and integrated approach) was studied on productivity, profitability, nutrient uptake and physicochemical properties of soil in soybean–wheat cropping system, at New Delhi during 2010–2012. Sixteen treatment combinations consisting of four tillage and crop establishment practices, viz. Conventional Tillage–raisedbed (CT–bed), CT–flatbed, Zero Tillage–raisedbed (ZT–bed) and ZT–flatbed and four weed management practices, viz. unweeded control, herbicide+Hand Weeding (HW), herbicide combination, and crop residue + herbicide were laid out in a splitplot design. Soybean produced higher seed yield (+7.6%) under raisedbed and wheat under flatbed (+6.2%), but the system productivity was highest under CT–flatbed. Preemergence application of pendimethalin followed by HW gave higher yield of soybean, while all weed control treatments were found equally good for wheat. Conventional tillage resulted in higher uptake by soybean of N (+5.0%), P (+4.4%) and K (+3.1%) than ZT, particularly under raisedbed conditions. In wheat, CT and ZT resulted in almost similar nutrient uptake under flatbed. Total nutrient uptake of the system was similar for N and P under all tillage and crop establishment practices, while herbicide+HW gave 4.9–7.2% higher uptake than herbicide combination or crop residue+herbicide. Net benefit: cost ratio of the system was the highest (gt 2.0) under ZT–flatbed and herbicide combination. There was beneficial effect on physicochemical properties of soil under ZT and residue application, but it is necessary to run the experiment in longterm to see the cumulative effect over time.