Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
RWCS are of considerable significance in meeting Asia's food require-
ments. However, practice of following a cereal-cereal cropping system on
the same piece of land over years has led to soil fertility deterioration, and
questions are being raised on its sustainability (Duxbury and Gupta 2000;
Ladha et al. 2000; Prasad 2005). Efforts were, therefore, made to find
out alternate cropping systems. Sharma and Prasad (1999) recommended
that growing a short-duration mung bean after wheat and incorporating
of its residue in succeeding rice made rice-wheat cropping system more
productive, remunerative, and soil recuperative than traditional rice-wheat
cropping system.
Organic farming of Basmati rice-based cropping system is another
alternative system for sustainability of crop production and natural re-
sources. Moreover, there is a great demand of organically grown food in
European and Middle East countries and offer two to two and a half times
higher prices for organic produce (Partap 2006). Organic farming often has
to deal with a scarcity of readily available nutrients in contrast to inorganic
farming which relies on soluble fertilizers. The aim of nutrient manage-
ment in organic systems is to optimize the use of on-farm resources and
minimize losses (Kopke 1995). Maximum use of crop residues has been
suggested towards building soil fertility (Jasdan and Hutchaon 1996). Rice
and wheat straw have large potential for plant nutrients in organic farming
of rice-wheat system. The straw in the system accounts about 35% to 40%
N, 10% to 15% of P, and 80% to 90% of K removal by these crops (Shar-
ma and Sharma 2004). Incorporation of straw, thus, results in recycling
of a sizable amount of plant nutrients. However, there is a great diffi culty
in using the plant residue of cereals due to higher C/N ratio. Hence, there
is an urgent need to develop a suitable technology to use crop residue in
organic farming. We have to mix the plant residues of cereals with well-
decomposed farmyard manures or plant residue of legumes for narrowing
down of C/N ratio so as to overcome the adverse effect of immobilization
of native plant nutrients. Sharma and Prasad (1999) reported that incorpo-
ration of mung bean residue was found to be at par with Sesbania green
manure in rice-wheat system.
The responses of the succeeding crops in a cropping system are infl u-
enced greatly by the preceding crops and the inputs applied therein. There-
