Impact of Tillage and Nutrient Management in Maize-Wheat Crop Rotation Under Dryland Cultivation

Tillage is a major farm operation that consumes time, energy and expense. Dryland cultivation practices need to minimize cost of production in all crops. An experiment has been conducted on two tillage systems; (1) conventional and (2) reduced tillage, to save energy in production of maize and wheat. Three tillage treatments in combination with three fertilizer treatments were used. The highest yield of maize was 20.50 q/ha with conventional tillage + interculture. The next highest yield for maize was 20.16 q/ha with 50% conventional tillage + weedicide + interculture. The highest yield of wheat was 29.33 q/ha with 50% conventional tillage + weedicide + interculture. The next highest yield of wheat was 27.87 q/ha with conventional tillage + interculture. The fertilizer treatment showed the highest average grain yield of maize of 21.90 q/ha with 100% N with inorganic fertilizer. The next highest fertilized treatment with maize was with 50% N through organic + 50% N through inorganic fertilizers for a yield of 19.85 q/ha. A similar trend was found for wheat with the highest average grain yield of 29.00 q/ha with 100% N through inorganic fertilizer. The next highest fertilized treatment with wheat was with 50% N through organic + 50% N through inorganic fertilizers with a grain yield of 28.25 q/ha. The operational energy and cost of operation were higher in the conventional tillage system (5,013.8 MJ, Rs.10,574 and 2,907.53 MJ, Rs.11,347.33) than in reduce tillage (3,625.39 MJ, Rs.9,750 and 2,227.20 MJ, Rs.10,335.30) and the benefit cost ratio ranged from 1.52: 1 to 0.36: 1 and 1.08: 1 to 1.41: 1 in production of maize and wheat, respectively.