Conservation agriculture inspired soil and crop management practices on soil quality indicators and crop productivity in medium black calcareous soils of semi-arid regions in India

Ram A Jat ¹ Kiran K Reddy ² Raja R Choudhary ² Anita Kumawat ¹ Dinesh Jinger ^1* Dhakshanamoorthy Dinesh ¹ Rahul Solanki ² Venkatesh Paramesh ³ Vijay Singh Meena ⁴ Kuldeep Kumar ¹ Kadambot H.M Siddique ⁵ Arun Jyoti Nath ⁶

• ¹ Indian Institute of Soil and Water Conservation (ICAR), Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India
• ² Directorate of Groundnut Research (ICAR-DGR), Jūnāgadh, India
• ³ Central Coastal Agricultural Research Institute (ICAR), Old Goa, Goa, India
• ⁴ Indian Agricultural Research Institute (ICAR), New Delhi, National Capital Territory of Delhi, India
• ⁵ University of Western Australia, Perth, Western Australia, Australia
• ⁶ Assam University, Silchar, Assam, India

Land management practices play a crucial role in achieving Sustainable Development Goals 36 (SDGs) especially of no poverty, zero hunger, climate action, and life on land. Peanuts-wheat is 37 the predominant cropping system in the medium black calcareous soil of semi-arid regions in 38 India, but crop yield in this rainfed system is primarily influenced by unabated soil degradation, 39 moisture stress, crop residue burning, and low factor productivity. Crop productivity and soil 40 health can be greatly increased using soil and crop management strategies based on conservation 41 agriculture (CA). An experiment was conducted to assess the impact of tillage techniques 42 [conventional-tillage (CT), minimum-tillage (MT), and zero-tillage (ZT)], and crop 43 residue/biomass management techniques [no residues (NR), wheat stubble (WS), and wheat 44 stubble+Cassia tora mulch (WSC)] on soil quality indicators crop productivity in medium black 45 soils. Results revealed that ZT enhanced large macro-aggregates (> 2mm), macro-aggregates 46(0.25-2 mm), and micro-aggregates (0.053-0.25 mm) by 89%, 113.6%, and 33.3%, respectively, 47 over CT. Similarly, WSC produced 45.6% higher WSA compared to NR. In addition, ZT 48 improved aggregate-associated carbon by 46.8%, soil organic carbon (SOC) by 26.6%, and water 49 infiltration by 12.7% compared to CT. Moreover, water infiltration rate was recorded higher 50 under WSC (103.8 mm hr -1 ) and WS (102.2 mm hr -1 ) over NR (96.7 mm hr -1 ). Compared to CT, 51 soil microbial biomass carbon (SMBC) increased by 23.6% and 40.6% under ZT and MT, 52 respectively at 0-15 cm soil depths. Similarly, higher peanut pod yield (1769 kg ha -1 ), wheat 53 grain yield (3623 kg ha -1 ), and peanut equivalent yield (3037 kg ha -1 ) were observed under WSC 54 compared to NR.Further, the higher system net returns was observed under MT (970.1 $ ha -1 ) and WSC (975.1 $ 56 ha -1 ). Therefore, CA-inspired practices could be recommended for improving soil quality 57 indicators and enhancing soil productivity, profitability on, sustainabile basis in semi-arid 58 regions of India.