ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Agron.
Sec. Agroecological Cropping Systems
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fagro.2025.1612792
This article is part of the Research TopicEnhancing Ecosystem Services through Conservation Agriculture, Agroforestry, and Traditional Farming SystemsView all 6 articles
Evaluating Soil Physico-chemical Properties and Nutrient Availability through Intensify Intensified Conservation Agriculture based Cropping Systems
Provisionally accepted
Arun Kumar Kumar1*
K S Saini2Sandeep Sharma2Manish Yadav2Gurjeet Singh3Kavita Devi2
Kailash Chand Kumawat4*- 1Rajasthan University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, Bikaner, Rajasthan, India
- 2Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, Punjab, India
- 3Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center at Beaumont, Beaumont, Texas, United States
- 4Sam Higginbottom University of Agriculture, Technology and Sciences, Allahabad, India
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Conservation-agriculture (CA) practices have been widely promoted and recognized for their potential to enhance soil sustainability by improving soil properties. The purpose of the two-year field experiment was to investigate the effect of diversified CA based cropping systems on nutrient availability and soil characteristics. The study was conducted using a randomized complete block design (RCBD) with four replications at each site. Six cropping system (CS) scenarios were tested: S1-Rice-wheat-mungbean (R-W-SM) under conventional tillage (CT) without residue retention (R0); S2-R-W-SM under CA with residue retention (R+); S3-maize-wheat-mungbean (M-W-SM) under CT (R0); S4-M-W-SM under permanent bed (PB) with R+; S5-soybean-wheat- mungbean (S-W-SM) under CT (R0); and S6-S-W-SM under PB with R+.Though each annual cropping cycle spanned one year, the inclusion of mungbean (summer mungbean) in the same year allowed assessment of a three-crop rotation within each year. After two cropping years (effectively covering two complete crop rotation cycles), results indicated that S6 significantly improved soil properties: bulk density decreased by 4.4%, and infiltration rate increased by 45.6% compared to S1. Soil organic carbon and macro- and micro-nutrient availability were notably higher under CA-based systems (S2, S4, S6). The highest microbial biomass, enzymatic activity, and basal soil respiration (BSR) were recorded in S6. In both years, dehydrogenase activity (DHA) and BSR increased by 58.5–64.6 % under S6, compared to 40.7-41.4 % in S1. Micro-nutrients like Zn, Fe, Mn, and Cu were improved by 10%, 39%, 8%, and 63%, respectively in S6 over S1. These findings suggest that CA-based soybean-wheat- mungbean systems (S6) can substantially enhance soil health and nutrient dynamics in a short-term rotation and may guide future sustainable agriculture.
Keywords: Cropping system, Residue retention, Soil Organic Carbon, Basal soil respiration, summer mungbean
Received: 16 Apr 2025; Accepted: 19 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Kumar, Saini, Sharma, Yadav, Singh, Devi and Kumawat. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Arun Kumar Kumar, Rajasthan University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, Bikaner, Rajasthan, India
Kailash Chand Kumawat, Sam Higginbottom University of Agriculture, Technology and Sciences, Allahabad, India
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.