Crop establishment techniques for improving soil properties and productivity of chickpea (Cicer aertinum L.)

Abstract

A field experiment on chickpea followed after rice was conducted in a sandy loam soil with medium fertility at the Research Farm, Department of Agronomy, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana during Rabi 2007–08 for assessing the effect of crop establishment techniques on soil properties, seed yield and economics of chickpea varieties. The treatments comprising of 6 levels of crop establishment techniques in main plots and 4 varieties in sub plots were laid out in a split plot design with three replications. Chickpea yield remained unaffected due to different crop establishment techniques and was indicative of the fact that the frequency of tillage could be reduced without compromising on chickpea yield. Conventional tillage + straw incorporated plots had the lowest bulk density (1.53 g/cm3), highest cumulative infiltration rate at 60 minutes (16.38 cm/h) and highest root mass density (1927 g/m3) over the bed planted plots. Zero and reduced tillage enhanced soil availability of N, P and K at the crop harvest. The bulk of the root mass was mostly confined to 60 cm soil depth except that of ‘BG 1053’ (limited to upper 30 soil). Reduced and zero tillage raised profit margin (` 1400-2650/ha) from the crop over conventional and bed planting as these saved both time (3.20- 5.28 h/ha) and fuel (12.52-21.12 L of diesel/ha) for seed bed preparation.