ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Agroecology and Ecosystem Services
Volume 9 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2025.1622985
This article is part of the Research TopicEnhancing Soil Health and Climate Resilience through Sustainable Agricultural PracticesView all 9 articles
Impact of different cropping systems on structural attributes and aggregateassociated C dynamics of clayey soil under Conservation Agriculture
Provisionally accepted
ARNAB KUNDU1*
Jayashree Dey Sarkar2*
Subham Mukherjee2
RAMPROSAD NANDI2
Subhadip Saha2Prasanta Kumar Bandyopadhyay2Shalini Sharma3- 1Department of Soil Science, Dr. Rajendra Prasad Central Agricultural University, Samastipur, India
- 2Department of Agricultural Chemistry and Soil Science, Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya, Nadia, India
- 3Department of Soil Science and Agricultural Chemistry, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India
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A short-term experiment was conducted to evaluate the impact of conservation agriculture (CA) practices on structural attributes of a very fine textured soil (clay ~60%) in the lower Gangetic Plains of West Bengal with different rice-based cropping systems. The split-split plot experimental design was followed with three rice-based cropping systems [rice-mustard-black gram (RMuB), rice-wheat-green gram (RWG) and rice-lentil-fallow (RLF)] in main plots, three tillage systems [conventional tillage (CT), zero tillage (ZT) and reduced tillage (RT)] in sub-plots and three combinations of residue and nutrient treatments [0% rice residue+100% recommended dose of fertilizer (RDF) (R1), 100% residue+75% RDF fertilization (R2) and 50% residue+75% RDF fertilization (R3)] in sub-sub plots. After 8 cropping seasons, ZT showed the highest values of geometric mean diameter (GMD) and aggregate ratio (AR) which were 13.0% and 22.6% higher than the corresponding values of CT, and 7% and 20% higher than RT. R2 resulted in a 3% and 13% hike in GMD and AR, respectively, over R1. RWG showed a hike in SOC over other cropping systems which further reduced the tensile strength of soil aggregates. Although significantly higher SOC is recorded in silt+clay fraction, the C mass associated with coarse macroaggregates demonstrated up to 1.70 times increment than the C mass of rest of the fractions.Conjoint adoption of ZT and 100% rice residue (with 75% RDF fertilization) were the best management practice for upkeeping structural attributes of experimental soil. Further, the inclusion of a cereal along with a leguminous crop in a rice-based cropping system demonstrated the best outcome in terms of structural indices, SOC and aggregate associated C mass.
Keywords: conservation agriculture, Clayey soil, Rice-based cropping system, Soil Structure, aggregate associated carbon Language style: British English
Received: 05 May 2025; Accepted: 11 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 KUNDU, Dey Sarkar, Mukherjee, NANDI, Saha, Bandyopadhyay and Sharma. 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:
ARNAB KUNDU, Department of Soil Science, Dr. Rajendra Prasad Central Agricultural University, Samastipur, India
Jayashree Dey Sarkar, Department of Agricultural Chemistry and Soil Science, Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya, Nadia, India
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