Productivity and Economics of Rice-Wheat Cropping System under Irrigation, Nutrient and Tillage Practices in a Silty Clay Loam Soil

Field experiments were conducted in two consecutive kharif and rabi seasons of 2013-14 and 2014-15 at A1 block of N. E. Borlaug Crop Research Centre of Govind Ballabh Pant University of Agriculture & Technology, Pantnagar (Uttarakhand) to study the effect of irrigation, fertilizer and tillage practices on productivity and economics of rice-wheat cropping system in a silty clay loam soil. The experiment was laid out in split-plot design with three replications. The experiment was comprised of two levels of irrigation (3 days after disappearance of surface water (DADSW) and 6 DADSW for rice and CRI+IW: CPE 0.75 and CRI+IW: CPE 0.5 for wheat), two levels of NPK (120:60:40 and 90:45:30 for rice and 150:60:40 and 113:45:30 for wheat) and three tillage practices (puddled transplanting-conventional tillage; unpuddled transplanting - shallow tillage and zero tillage transplanting-zero tillage, respectively for rice-wheat). The irrigation levels did not affect significantly the grain and straw yields as well as on economics of both the crops. During both the years, application of NPK @120:60:40 and 150:60:40 recorded significantly higher grain and straw yields than 90:45:30 and 113:45:30, respectively of rice and wheat. The gross, net return and benefit: cost ratio was also higher at higher dose of NPK than lower dose during both the years for both the crops. For rice, puddled transplanting recorded the highest grain and straw yield closely followed by unpuddled transplanting, whereas the lowest was with zero tillage transplanted rice during both the years. For wheat, conventional tillage recorded the maximum grain yield closely followed by shallow tillage in both the years. The net return and B: C ratio were the highest for unpuddled transplanted rice, while for wheat though the net return was the highest with shallow tillage but benefit: cost ratio with zero tillage.