ISSN: 0973-7510

E-ISSN: 2581-690X

R.K. Naresh1, Ashish Dwivedi1 , R.K. Gupta2, R.S. Rathore3, S.S. Dhaliwal4, S.P. Singh5, Pardeep Kumar6, Robin Kumar6, Vikrant Singh1, Vineet Singh1 and Onkar Singh5
1Department of Agronomy, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel University of Agriculture &Technology, Meerut-250110, U.P., India.
2Borlaug Institute for South Asia.
3Uttar Pradesh Council of Agricultural Research, Lucknow, India.
4Department of Soil Science, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, PB, India.
5Department of Soil Science, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel University of Agriculture &Technology, Meerut-250110, U.P., India.
6Indian Institute of Farming System Research, Modipuram, Meerut-250110, U.P., India.
J. Pure Appl. Microbiol., 2016, 10 (2): 1061-1080
© The Author(s). 2016
Received: 13/01/2016 | Accepted: 19/04/2016 | Published: 30/06/2016
Abstract

Soil tillage is one of the fundamental agro technical operations in agriculture because of its influence on soil properties, environment and crop growth. Since continuous soil tillage strongly influence the soil properties, it is important to apply appropriate tillage practices that avoid the degradation of soil structure, maintain crop yield as well as ecosystem stability. The efficiency of input use viz. water, fertilizers, herbicides and others depend on tillage and crop establishment practices. It is therefore, essential that the soil environment be manipulated suitably for ensuring a good crop stand and improve resource-use efficiency. Sustaining production and productivity of any system is of paramount importance by improving the soil’s physical, chemical and biological properties. Conventional tillage operations will alter these properties in every cropping cycle thereby affecting the soil system. Conservation agriculture (CA), practising agriculture in such a way so as to cause minimum damage to the environment is being advocated at a large scale world-wide. Conservation tillage, the most important aspect of CA, is thought to take care of the soil health, plant growth and the environment. This paper aims to review the work done on conservation tillage in different agro-ecological regions so as to understand its impact from the perspectives of the soil, the crop and the environment. Research reports have identified several benefits of conservation tillage over conventional tillage (CT) with respect to soil physical, chemical and biological properties as well as crop yields.The largest contribution of CA to reducing emissions from farming activities is made by the reduction of tillage operations. Altering crop rotation can influence soil C stocks by changing quantity and quality of organic matter input. Therefore, conservation tillage involving ZT and minimum tillage which has potential to break the surface compact zone in soil with reduced soil disturbance offers to lead to a better soil environment and crop yield with minimal impact on the environment.

Keywords

Carbon sequestration, Soil health, Tillage Residue management, CO2 emission.

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© The Author(s) 2016. Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License which permits unrestricted use, sharing, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.