Book of Extended summaries ISDA

International Conference on Reimagining Rainfed Agro-ecosystems: Challenges &
Opportunities during 22-24, December 2022 at ICAR-CRIDA, Hyderabad
drought and lead to an increase in crop yield. Keeping these in view, the present investigation
was undertaken to assess the yield advantage and its impact on soil.
Methodology
The field experiment was carried out during Kharif for four years (2018-2021) at AICRP for
Dry land Agriculture, Gandhi Krishi Vignana Kendra, to study the subsoiling effect on
moisture conservation in finger millet + pigeon pea and groundnut + pigeon pea cropping
system. The experiment was conducted in split plot design with two cropping system in main
plot viz., C 1: Finger millet + Pigeon pea and C 2: Groundnut + Pigeon pea and five subsoiling
treatments viz., S1: subsoiling at 2 m interval, S2: subsoiling at 4 m interval, S3: subsoiling at 2
m interval with FYM, S 4: subsoiling at 4 m interval with FYM and S 5: Control in sub plots and
replicated three times.
Results
Soil moisture content, Yield and Economics
The data pertaining to soil moisture at 0-15 cm depth at different crop growing stages is
presented from the year 2018 to 2021. Among the different subsoiling treatments, subsoiling
at 2 m interval along with the addition of farm yard manure were found to be superior to rest
of the treatments. Better root development in subsoiling treatment might be due to the better
available soil moisture regime. Similar results were reported by Ramana et al. (2015). Among
different sub soiling treatment during 2021 S 3 (finger millet equivalent yield: 2765 kg ha -1 , net
returns: ₹. 53089 ha -1 and B:C ratio: 2.35) and S4 (finger millet equivalent yield: 2682 kg ha -1 ,
net returns: ₹. 51244 ha -1 and B:C ratio: 2.35) were on par and lower yield and net returns were
found in the remaining treatments. There was no significant difference among the interaction
effect on finger millet equivalent yield. In comparison with the pooled data from first three
years (2018-2020), subsoiling at 2 m interval with FYM showed significantly higher finger
millet equivalent yield (3088 kg ha -1 ), net returns (₹. 59273 ha -1 ) and B:C ratio (2.56) and the
increasing trend in the yield were S 3>S 4>S 1>S 2>S 5 during three years data (2018-2020) but the
trend during 2021 was S3=S4>S1=S2=S5 which clearly showed that there was no subsoiling
effect from the fourth year but due to the addition of organic manure in subsoiling at 2 m
interval with FYM and subsoiling at 4 m interval with FYM for four consecutive years resulted
in higher yield, net returns and benefit cost ratio. The increase in yield during 2018-2020 was
due to break down of hard pan which increased the available soil moisture along with nutrient
availability by the application of organic manure (Sun et al., 2017).
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