ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Crop Biology and Sustainability
Zero tillage with paddy straw mulching a promising technique for enhancing yield and quality of potato
Provisionally accepted
Hiranya Jyoti BaruaMahima BegumNayan Jyoti OjhaKalyan PathakBhabesh GogoiSoibam Helena DeviBarsri Boro
Ingudam BhupenchandraMonimala SaikiaPranjit SutradharBarsha NeogPerves Ahmed
Dimpi Dutta*Shilpa SaikiaPrety Rekha NarzaryChinthiya GogoiPratishruti Behera- Assam Agricultural University, Jorhat, India
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Continuous intensive tillage practice led to deterioration of soil health and environment. Thus, considering the negative impact of conventional tillage (CT) practices on soil properties, a field experiment was conducted for two consecutive years 2021-23 to study the effect of various tillage practices on yield, quality and its subsequent effect on soil properties of potato under rice -fallow system. Although conventional tillage (CT) showed improvement on few growth parameters over zero tillage (ZT), but result revealed substantial improvement on physiological as well as yield parameters was noted in zero tillage (ZT) with paddy straw mulching. The ZT with paddy straw mulching in potato reported 45.11% more yield of potato tuber >75 g over CT that led to enhanced 13.97% greater yield than CT. The nutrient content in both haulm and tuber greatly increased under ZT with paddy straw mulching resulting in higher nutrient uptake by both. A significant improvement in tuber quality parameters like total ash, crude fibre, total carbohydrate and crude protein content was also noted in ZT with paddy straw mulching as compared to other tillage practices. The ZT with paddy straw mulching helped in buildup of 10.66 and 67.70% 68.07% more organic carbon and soil microbial biomass carbon over CT. It also increased the soil organic carbon stock up to 16.56 t/ha which was 15% higher than CT. The enhancement in soil nutrient availability was also noted in ZT with paddy straw mulching over CT.
Keywords: conservation tillage4, minimum tillage3, nutrient uptake7, potato1, quality6, yield5, zero tillage2
Received: 16 Sep 2025; Accepted: 26 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Barua, Begum, Ojha, Pathak, Gogoi, Devi, Boro, Bhupenchandra, Saikia, Sutradhar, Neog, Ahmed, Dutta, Saikia, Narzary, Gogoi and Behera. 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: Dimpi Dutta
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