Integrated strategy to control wilt disease of cumin (Cuminum cyminum L.) caused by Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cumini (Schlecht) Prasad & Patel

Various fungicides, oilcakes and fertilizers were evaluated at Jaipur (Rajasthan) for themanagement of cumin (Cuminum cyminum) wilt caused by Fusarium oxysporum f. sp.  cumini.Trimethyl thiuram disulphide (0.1 g g-1 seeds) was the best fungicide which was on par withpropiconazole, carbendazim and copper oxychloride (0.1 g g-1 seeds) for the control of wilt.The disease incidence was minimum under the soil treatment with neem cake (30 q ha-1)which was on par with sesamum cake (25 q ha-1). Among the chemical and non-chemicalmanures, application of NPK @ 40 kg ha-1 was most suitable to control the disease whichwas on par with Azotobacter @ 40 kg ha-1. The disease incidence was also significantly lowerin plants grown in solarized soil. The yield was significantly higher in all treatments ascompared to control. The highest cost : benefit ratio was obtained (1:40) in thiophanatemethyl treatment followed by carbendazim. Among the combined treatments, minimumdisease incidence was recorded with solarized soil + sesamum cake @ 25 q ha-1 + seed treatmentwith carbendazim @ 0.1 g g-1 seeds followed by solarized  soil + sesamum cake @ 25 q ha-1  +Azotobacter @ 40 q ha-1. However, the highest  cost : benefit ratio (1:10.6) was obtained withsolarized soil + sesamum cake @ 25 q ha-1 + Azotobacter (biofertilizer) @ 40 kg ha-1. Theintegrated treatments recorded the highest grain yield and low disease incidence over controlas compared to individual application. &nbsp

Role of Women in Crop Residue Management for Better Health

The role of women has changed dramatically from stone age to contemporary global society. The process of Industrialization, modernization and globalization show its deep impact on human society all over the world. The role and responsibilities of women have attained new definition and perspective. On the encouraging side, in the Northwest India, there has been a relatively increase in economic participation in the past one decade. Development programmes and policies have largely tended to focus on women in isolation with little effort to work alongside men and include them in restructuring social relations to mainstream gender. If women’s empowerment is to be achieved and sustained in agriculture, it must be complemented by programmes that include working with men to bring about the desired structural change. The training workshop was conducted to motivate the women folks of Haryana villages to participate in the agricultural activities, support to bring change and updating in farming practices by adopting new trending mechanization and techniques like Happy Seeder, Green Seeker, Soil Humidity Meter, adopt techniques like ‘Lekha-Jhokha’ for better farming practices, and to earn profits by their contributions. The main focus was to make aware women to participate in no burning of rice crop residue, so that they can influence in reducing the air pollution and strengthen the Conservation Agriculture (CA), to enhance the field nutrients by sustainable agricultural practices

Youth Farmer’s Training : Business Model for Scaling Happy Seeder Technology

Rural youth continue to face challenges related to unemployment, underemployment and poverty. Despite the agricultural sector’s ample potential to provide income-generating opportunities for rural youth, challenges related specifically to youth participation in this sector and more importantly options for overcoming them are not extensively documented. For youth to successfully participate in the agricultural sector, access to both information and education are crucial. In addition to knowledge of agricultural production and processing techniques and the relative know-how, young farmers need access to information about finance, land and markets.The training strongly emphasized participatory extension principles and entrepreneurship as means of increasing farm productivity amongst young farmers. Utilizing field mechanization as a means of optimizing the number of youth engaged in face-to-face learning, past workshops were held for young farmers that served to provide space for interactions with experts, discuss methods for improving delivery of services, and learn a new component of agribusiness and entrepreneurship with the intent of transferring this information to more youth farmers in a similar way

Energy and economic efficiency of climate-smart agriculture practices in a rice–wheat cropping system of India

Intensive tillage operations, indiscriminate use of irrigation water, chemical fertilizers, and pesticides and crop biomass burning have made the conventional rice–wheat (RW) system highly energy-intensive and inefficient. In the recent past, portfolios of climate-smart agricultural practices (CSAP) have been promoted as a potential alternative to improve the energy efficiency in conventional RW system. Therefore, to evaluate the energy input–output relation, energy flow and economic efficiency in various combinations of crop management options, a 3-year (2014–2017) on-farm study was conducted at Karnal, India. Various portfolio of management practices; Sc1-Business as usual (BAU) or Conventional tillage (CT) without residue, Sc2-CT with residue, Sc3-Reduce tillage (RT) with residue + recommended dose of fertilizer (RDF), Sc4-RT/Zero tillage (ZT) with residue + RDF, Sc5-ZT with residue + RDF + GreenSeeker + Tensiometer, Sc6-Sc5 + Nutrient expert were investigated. Present study results revealed that net energy, energy use efficiency and energy productivity were 11–18, 31–51 and 29–53% higher under CSAP (mean of Sc4, Sc5 and Sc6) in RW system than Sc1, respectively. However, renewable and non-renewable energy inputs were 14 and 33% higher in Sc1 compared to CSAP (4028 and 49,547 MJ ha−1), respectively, it showed that BAU practices mostly dependents on non-renewable energy sources whereas CSAP dependents on renewable energy sources. Similarly, the adoption of CSAP improved the biomass yield, net farm income and economic efficiency by 6–9, 18–23 and 42–58%, respectively compared to Sc1. Overall, the adoption of CSAP could be a viable alternative for improving energy use efficiency, farm profitability and eco-efficiency in the RW system

Diverse and healthy cropping systems trial protocol

On-Farm Research Trials are part of TAFSSA’s Work Package 2 (WP2) activities. WP2 emphasizes farm-and landscape-level interdisciplinary research to identify strategies to increase farmers’ profits and nutritional yields, conserve resources, and maintain or enhance ecological services, while also mitigating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from farms and agricultural landscapes. Going beyond typical agriculture-nutrition programs in South Asia, we explore field-and landscape-scale crop and animal farm diversification options supporting multiple benefits, including potential nutritional yield, across environmental and socioeconomic gradients of rice and maize-based farming systems. ICAR-CSSRI (Central Soil Salinity Research Institute) Karnal of Haryana in the northwest Indo-Gangetic Plains of India has been selected as basic research and learning site based on key information on food and nutrition security gaps, environmental stresses, air pollution due to residue burning, groundwater exploitation and climate challenges as well as the prevalence of commodities and farming systems that offer the greatest potential to achieve TAFSSA’s outcomes

Rice yield gaps and nitrogen-use efficiency in the Northwestern Indo-Gangetic Plains of India: Evidence based insights from heterogeneous farmers’ practices

A large database of individual farmer field data (n = 4,107) for rice production in the Northwestern Indo-Gangetic Plains of India was used to decompose rice yield gaps and to investigate the scope to reduce nitrogen (N) inputs without compromising yields. Stochastic frontier analysis was used to disentangle efficiency and resource yield gaps, whereas data on rice yield potential in the region were retrieved from the Global Yield Gap Atlas to estimate the technology yield gap. Rice yield gaps were small (ca. 2.7 t ha−1, or 20% of potential yield, Yp) and mostly attributed to the technology yield gap (ca. 1.8 t ha−1, or ca. 15% of Yp). Efficiency and resource yield gaps were negligible (less than 5% of Yp in most districts). Small yield gaps were associated with high input use, particularly irrigation water and N, for which small yield responses were observed. N partial factor productivity (PFP-N) was 45–50 kg grain kg−1 N for fields with efficient N management and approximately 20% lower for the fields with inefficient N management. Improving PFP-N appears to be best achieved through better matching of N rates to the variety types cultivated and by adjusting the amount of urea applied in the 3rd split in correspondance with the amount of diammonium-phosphate applied earlier in the season. Future studies should assess the potential to reduce irrigation water without compromising rice yield and to broaden the assessment presented here to other indicators and at the cropping systems level

A Compendium of Key Climate Smart Agriculture Practices in Intensive Cereal Based Systems of South Asia

CSA initially proposed by FAO in 2010 at “The Hague Conference on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change (CC)”, to address the need for a strategy to manage agriculture and food systems, under climate change. The CSA by its original proponents describes the three objectives; i) sustainably increasing agricultural productivity to support equitable increases in incomes, food security and development; ii) adapting and building resilience to climate change from the farm to national levels; and iii) developing opportunities to reduce GHG emissions from agriculture compared with past trends. Since then, these three objectives (in short food security, adaptation and mitigation) are designated as the three “pillars” (or criteria) of CSA within the agricultural science and development communities. Climate Smart (Sustainable Management of Agricultural Resources and Techniques) Agriculture is an approach of crop production, which deals with the management of available agricultural resources with latest management practices and farm machinery, under a particular set of edaphic and environmental conditions. It works to enhance the achievement of national food security and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). CSA is location specific and tailored to fit the agro-ecological and socio-economic conditions of a location. CSA may be defined as “agriculture that sustainably increases productivity, resilience (adaptation), reduces/removes greenhouse gases (mitigation), and enhances achievement of national food security and development goals.” Therefore, if CSA implemented at right time with required resources, techniques and knowledge in a particular typological domain, will lead towards food security while improving adaptive capacity and mitigating potential for sustainable agriculture production

Gendered impacts of climate-smart agriculture on household food security and labor migration: insights from Bihar, India

Increasing trends of climatic risk pose challenges to the food security and livelihoods of smallholders in vulnerable regions, where farmers often face loss of the entire crop, pushing farmers (mostly men) out of agriculture in destitution, creating a situation of agricultural making agriculture highly feminization and compelling male farmers to out-migrate. Climate-smart agricultural practices (CSAPs) are promoted to cope with climatic risks. This study aims to assess how knowledge related to CSAPs, male out-migration, education and income contribute to the determinants of male out-migration and CSAPs adoption and how they respond to household food security. Design/methodology/approach Sex-disaggregated primary data were collected from adopter and non-adopter farm families. STATA 13.1 was used to perform principle component analysis to construct knowledge, yield and income indices. Findings Yield and income index of adopters was higher for men than women. The probability of out-migration reduced by 21% with adoption of CSAPs. An increase in female literacy by 1 unit reduces log of odds to migrate by 0.37. With every unit increase in knowledge index, increase in log-odds of CSAPs adoption was 1.57. Male:female knowledge gap was less among adopters. Non-adopters tended to reduce food consumption when faced with climatic risks significantly, and the probability of migration increased by 50% with a one-unit fall in the nutrition level, thus compelling women to work more in agriculture. Gender-equitable enhancement of CSAP knowledge is, therefore, key to safeguarding sustainable farming systems and improving livelihoods. Social implications The enhancement of gender equitable knowledge on CSAPs is key to safeguard sustainable farming systems and improved livelihoods. Originality/value This study is based on the robust data sets of 100 each of male and female from 100 households (n = 200) using well-designed and validated survey instrument. From 10 randomly selected climate-smart villages in Samastipur and Vaishali districts of Bihar, India, together with focus group discussions, the primary data were collected by interviewing both men and women from the same household

Portfolios of Climate Smart Agriculture Practices in Smallholder Rice-Wheat System of Eastern Indo-Gangetic Plains—Crop Productivity, Resource Use Efficiency and Environmental Foot Prints

The conventional tillage based rice-wheat system (RWS) in Indo-genetic plains (IGP) of South Asia is facing diverse challenges like increase in production cost and erratic climatic events. This results in stagnated crop productivity and declined farm profitability with increased emission of greenhouse gases. Therefore, 3-year multi-location farmer’s participatory research trial was conducted to assess the impact of crop establishment and residue management techniques on crop productivity, economic profitability and environmental footprints in RWS. The aim of this study was to analyze the effect of combinations of improved agronomic technologies compared to farmer’s practices (FP) on crop productivity, profitability, resource use efficiency and environmental footprints. The experiment had six scenarios that is, S1-Farmer’s practice; Conventional tillage (CT) without residue; S2-CT with residue, S3- Reduced tillage (RT) with residue + Recommended dose of fertilizer (RDF); S4-RT/zero tillage (ZT) with residue + RDF, S5-ZT with residue + RDF + green seeker + tensiometer + information & communication technology + crop insurance and S6- S5 + site specific nutrient management. Climate smart agriculture practices (CSAPs; mean of S4, S5 and S6) increase system productivity and farm profitability by 10.5% and 29.4% (on 3 yrs’ mean basis), whereas, improved farmers practices (mean of S2 and S3) resulted in only 3.2% and 5.3% increments compared to farmer’s practice (S1), respectively. On an average, CSAPs saved 39.3% of irrigation water and enhanced the irrigation and total water productivity by 53.9% and 18.4% than FP, respectively. In all the 3-years, CSAPs with high adaptive measures enhanced the energy-use-efficiency (EUE) and energy productivity (EP) by 43%–54% and 44%–61%, respectively than FP. In our study, global warming potential (GWP), GHG emission due to consumption energy and greenhouse gas intensity were recorded lower by 43%, 56% and 59% in Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) with high adaptive measures than farmers practices (3652.7 kg CO2 eq. ha−1 yr−1, 722.2 kg CO2 eq. ha−1 yr−1 and 718.7 Mg kg−1 CO2 eq. ha−1 yr−1). The findings of the present study revealed that CSA with adaption of innovative measures (S6) improved 3-year mean system productivity by 10.5%, profitability by 29.4%, water productivity and energy productivity by 18.3% and 48.9%, respectively than FP. Thus, the results of our 3-year farmer’s participatory study suggest that in a RW system, climate smart agriculture practices have better adaptive capacity and could be a feasible option for attaining higher yields, farm profitability, energy-use efficiency and water productivity with sustained/improved environmental quality in smallholder production systems of Eastern IGP of India and other similar agro-ecologies of South Asia. Finally, the adoption of these CSAPs should be promoted in the RW rotation of IGP to ensure food security, restoration of soil health and to mitigate climate change, the key sustainable development goals (SDGs)

Precision Nutrient Rates and Placement in Conservation Maize-Wheat System: Effects on Crop Productivity, Profitability, Nutrient-Use Efficiency, and Environmental Footprints

Intensive tillage-based production systems coupled with inefficient fertilizer management practices have led to increased production costs, sub-optimal productivity, and significant environmental externalities. Conservation agriculture (CA) is being increasingly advocated as a management strategy to overcome these issues but precision nutrient management under the CA-based maize-wheat system is rarely studied. Two year’s (2014–2015 and 2015–2016) research was conducted at the research farm of BISA, Pusa, Bihar, India to develop precision nutrient management practices for CA-based management in the maize-wheat system. Seven treatment combinations involving (i) tillage (conventional tillage; CT & permanent beds; PB) and (ii) nutrient management rates, application methods (farmers’ fertilizer practices; FFP, state recommended dose of fertilizer; SR and precision nutrient management using Nutrient Expert tool; NE and GreenSeeker; (GS), applied using two methods; broadcasting (B) and drilling (D)) were investigated for multiple parameters. The results showed that NE, NE+GS, and SR-based nutrient management tactics with drilling improved crop yields, nutrient-use efficiency (NUE), and economic profitability relative to NE-broadcasting, SR broadcasting, and FFP broadcasting methods. Maize-wheat system productivity and net returns under NE+GS-drilling on PB were significantly higher by 31.2%, 49.7% compared to FFP-broadcasting method, respectively. Total global warming potential (GWP) was lower in the PB-based maize-wheat system coupled with precision nutrient management compared to CT-based maize-wheat system with FFP. Higher (15.2%) carbon sustainability index (CSI) was recorded with NE-drilling compared to FFP-broadcasting method. Results suggests that PB-based maize-wheat system together with precision nutrient management approaches (NE+GS+drilling) can significantly increase crop yields, NUE, and profitability while reducing the emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) from maize-wheat systems in eastern Indo Gangetic Plains (IGP)