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

Scalable diversification options delivers sustainable and nutritious food in Indo-Gangetic plains

Indo-Gangetic plains (IGP) of South Asia have supported bulk of human and bovine population in the region since ages, and a spectacular progress has been made in food production. However, malnutrition, diminishing total factor productivity, and natural resource degradation continue to plague this cereal-dominated region, which is also vulnerable to climate change. Addressing these challenges would require a transition towards diversifying cereal rotations with agroecological cropping systems. A study was, therefore, conducted at the experimental farm of ICAR-CSSRI, Karnal on crop diversification and sustainable intensification options using agro-ecological approaches such as Conservation Agriculture (CA) and diversified cropping systems to ensure food and nutritional security while sustaining the natural resources. On 2 years mean basis, CA-based cropping system management scenarios (mean of Sc2–Sc7) using diversified crop rotations; increased the system yield by 15.4%, net return by 28.7%, protein yield by 29.7%, while using 53.0% less irrigation water compared to conventional tillage (CT)-based rice–wheat system (Sc1). Maize-mustard-mungbean on permanent beds (PBs) (Sc4) recorded the highest productivity (+ 40.7%), profitability (+ 60.1%), and saved 81.8% irrigation water compared to Sc1 (11.8 Mg ha−1; 2190 USD ha−1; 2514 mm ha−1). Similarly, Sc5 (maize-wheat-mungbean on PBs) improved productivity (+ 32.2%), profitability (+ 57.4%) and saved irrigation water (75.5%) compared to Sc1. In terms of nutritional value, Sc5 was more balanced than other scenarios, and produced 43.8, 27.5 and 259.8% higher protein, carbohydrate and fat yields, respectively, compared to Sc1 (0.93, 8.55 and 0.14 Mg ha−1). Scenario 5 was able to meet the nutrient demand of 19, 23 and 32 additional persons ha−1 year−1 with respect to protein, carbohydrate and fat, respectively, compared to Sc1. The highest protein water productivity (~ 0.31 kg protein m−3 water) was recorded with CA-based soybean-wheat-mungbean (Sc6) system followed by maize-mustard-mungbean on PBs (Sc4) system (~ 0.29 kg protein m−3) and lowest under Sc1. Integration of short duration legume (mungbean) improved the system productivity by 17.2% and profitability by 32.1%, while triple gains in irrigation water productivity compared to CT-based systems. In western IGP, maize-wheat-mungbean on PBs was found most productive, profitable and nutritionally rich and efficient system compared to other systems. Therefore, diversification of water intensive cereal rotations with inclusion of legumes and CA-based management optimization can be potential option to ensure nutritious food for the dwelling communities and sustainability of natural resources in the region

Can agroecological transition of intensive cereal system of Indo-Gangetic plains deliver sustainable and nutritious food?

As of Jan. 18, 2023 this article is listed as a pre-print and as such has not been peer reviewed.Indo-Gangetic plains (IGP) of South Asia have supported bulk of human and bovine population in the region since ages, and a spectacular progress has been made here on food production. However, this cereal-system-dominated region still suffers with challenges of malnourishment, declining total factor productivity and natural resource degradation with potential threats of climate change. Addressing these challenges would require a transition towards agroecological cropping systems. A study was, therefore, conducted on crop diversification and sustainable intensification options using agro-ecological approaches such as Conservation Agriculture (CA) to ensure food and nutritional security while sustaining the natural resources. On 2 years mean basis, CA-based cropping system management scenarios (mean of Sc2-Sc7) using diversified rotations; increased the system yield by 15.4%, net return by 28.7%, protein yield by 29.7%while using 53.0% less irrigation water compared to conventional tillage (CT)-based rice-wheat system (Sc1). Maize-mustard-mungbean on permanent beds (Sc4) recorded the highest productivity (+40.7%), profitability (+60.1%), and saved 81.8% of irrigation water compared to Sc1 (11.8 Mg ha-1; 2190 USD ha-1; 2514 mm ha-1). It was closely followed by Sc5 (32.3, 57.4, 413.8, 75.5%) i.e. maize-wheat-mungbean on permanent beds. In terms of nutritional value, Sc5 was more balanced than other scenarios, and produced 43.8, 27.5 and 259.8% higher protein, carbohydrate and fat yields, respectively, compared to Sc1 (0.93, 8.55 and 0.14 Mg ha-1). Scenario 5 was able to meet the nutrient demand of 19, 23 and 32 more persons ha-1 year-1 with respect to protein, carbohydrate and fat demand, respectively, compared to Sc1 (44, 86 and 13 persons ha-1 year-1).However, the highest protein and fat yield and their adult equivalents was associated with Sc6 (soybean based) and Sc4 (maize based), respectively. Soybean based system (Sc6) was economically more efficient with respect to nutrients than other systems. Mungbean integration improved the system productivity by 17.2 % and profitability by 32.1%, while improving the irrigation water productivity by three times compared to CT-based systems. In western IGP, CA-based maize-wheat-mungbean system was the most productive, profitable and nutritionally rich and efficient system compared to other systems. Therefore, CA- based crop diversification is an option to ensure quality and nutritious food for the dwelling communities in the region

Not Available

Not AvailableNot AvailableNot Availabl

Not Available

Not AvailableMite management is a major problem in pomegranate (Punica granatum L.) cultivation in the arid and semi-arid regions of India and other Asian countries. The aim of this work was to investigate the susceptibility to the false spider mite (Tenuipalpus punicae) in a germplasm collection of Indian pomegranates. A field screening of 73 accessions allowed to define different classes of susceptibility (from very low to very high) based on the percentage of infested leaves. Twenty-two accessions, representative of the empirically identified five susceptibility classes, were further tested. The field screening against the mite, extended to another two years, showed that the infestation level did not display a significant interaction with the growing season, and highly correlated between the different growing seasons. The analysis of the tree vegetative growth (height, canopy size, and stem diameter), main phytochemical classes (total phenolics, flavonoids, and tannins) and the antioxidant activity of the leaves indicated strong significant negative correlations between the infestation level and the biochemical traits. Multidimensional reduction of the measured traits revealed that the extreme classes of susceptibility to mites are mainly separated according to the accumulation of phytochemicals in leaves. This work, for the first time, allowed the identification of pomegranate germplasm with low susceptibility to T. punicae, with positive and useful implications for the establishment of new orchards, plant breeding, and the identification of allelochemicals of the leaves directly affecting mites.Not Availabl

Biological and mechanical interplay at the Macro- and Microscales Modulates the Cell-Niche Fate

10.1038/s41598-018-21860-6Scientific Reports81393

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical science. © The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press