Soil-test-crop-response based nutrient scheduling can improve soybean-wheat productivity and system sustainability.

Soybean-wheat sequence, one of the most vital cropping systems for farmers, has been suffering for productivity stagnation and decline due to several factors. Strategic management of the inputs particularly the nutrients could aid the crops achieve optimum growth and yield. Keeping this in mind, four years of field experiment was conducted to study the effect of combining inorganic as well as organic nutrient sources using soil-test-crop-response (STCR) approach in a randomized block design having ten treatments including control, 100% Recommended Dose of Fertilizers (RDF), 50% RDF, 100% RDF + 5 kg Zn ha (100% RDF + Zn), 100% RDF + 5 t farmyard manure ha (100% RDF + FYM), 50% RDF + 5 t farmyard manure ha (50% RDF + FYM), STCR inorganic with target yield-I (STCR TY-I), STCR inorganic with TY-II, STCR integrated with TY-I (STCR TY-I) and STCR integrated with TY-II (STCR TY-II) with each treatment replicated thrice.

Assessment of soil health parameters and application of the sustainability index to fields under conservation agriculture for 3, 6, and 9 years in India.

The effect of duration of conservation agriculture adoption on soil carbon dynamics and system sustainability was evaluated on farms of 30 villages in the Nilokheri block of Karnal district, Haryana, India. Sustainability was evaluated, in which a number of soil physical, chemical, and biological parameters were measured and a Sustainability Index (SI) was applied. Soil samples were collected from existing conservation agriculture (CA) and conventional tillage (CT) farms.