Comparative assessment of energy-cum-carbon flow of diverse tillage production systems for cleaner and sustainable crop production in the middle Indo-Gangetic Plains of South Asia

Abhay Kumar¹Rakesh Kumar^1*Sudip Sarkar^1*Dhiraj Kumar Singh¹Ujjwal Kumar¹Prem Kumar Sundaram¹Ram Kewal¹Banda Sainath¹Rohan Kumar Raman¹Anup Das¹Rachana Dubey¹Santosh Kumar¹Anirban Mukherjee¹Vijay Singh Meena²RAJ Kumar Jat³

• ¹ICAR-Research Complex for Eastern Region, Patana, India
• ²Indian Agricultural Research Institute (ICAR), New Delhi, National Capital Territory of Delhi, India
• ³Borlaug Institute for South Asia (BISA), Ludhiana, Punjab, India

The most prevalent cropping production system in the South Asia, transplanted puddled rice followed by conventional tillage wheat, is an unsustainable, extremely energy-intensive, and emit the large amount of the greenhouse gases. The methods used in conservation agriculture management practice such as diversified cropping rotations, residue retention, zero-till direct-seeded rice, and zero-till wheat, have the potential to increase crop productivity, while lowering the requirement of energy and carbon footprints. Therefore, in order to promote sustainable and energy-efficient conservation agriculture -based production system having the lower energy intensive rice-wheat cropping system in contrasting tillage and residue management scenarios. Treatments include triple cropping system of zero-till direct seeded rice (ZTDSR) during rainy season and zero-till wheat and mungbean in winter and mungbean (ZTRWM), lentil (ZTRLM), chickpea (ZTRCM), mustard (ZTRMM) along with conventional tillage rice-wheat system (CTRW). The zero-till production systems had significantly lesser operational energy for irrigation (~40%), sowing (~26%), land preparation (100%) in comparison to conventional tillage system. In comparison to the conventional-till rice-wheat system, zero-till cropping systems had the higher system biomass yield. The zero-till production system increased in wheat yields, Significant reduction in resources (fuel, fertilizer, machinery) under zero-till interventions. More than 60% of energy utilization coming from crop residue, irrespective of the diverse cropping production system. Maximum net energy returns, energy ratio, energy productivity, and energy intensity were recorded with zero-till rice-wheat system. The zero-till production systems had significantly lower carbon foot print, higher carbon efficiency and carbon sustainability index in comparison to CT-based management production system. Thus, it may be concluded that triple zero-tillage production systems along with crop residue had lower net energy output, greenhouse gases (GHGs) emission and carbon foot print over conventional till-based management production systems.