Growth, productivity and profitability of wheat in pigeon pea–wheat rotation under contrasting production system

A study conducted at ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi during 2022–23 and 2023–24 to evaluated the impact of conventional agriculture (CT), conservation agriculture (CA), and organic agriculture (OA) on wheat under pigeon pea-wheat system. Conservation agriculture treatments such as zero till permanent narrow bed (CA-PNB), permanent broad bed (CA-PBB), and permanent flatbed (CA-PFB) with residue outperformed CT and OA on growth parameters such as plant height, dry matter accumulation, leaf area index and crop growth rate of wheat. The same treatment also showed higher yield attributing characteristics such as ear bearing tiller and number of grains per spike compared to other treatments. The CA based CA-PBB recorded the maximum grain yield of 5.37 and 5.58 t/ha in 2022–23 and 2023–24, respectively, representing ~20.1 and 18.7% increase over CT (4.47 t/ha & 4.70 t/ha). Among the production systems, CA treatments (CA-PNB, CA-PBB, CA-PFB) demonstrated a ~19.5% higher grain yield compared to the CT system. Similarly, for biological yield also, CA-PBB showed the highest biological yield (13.13 and 13.28 t/ha) with ~14.0 and 11.8% higher values over CT in 2022–23 and 2023– 24, respectively. The CA treatments (CA-PNB, CA-PBB, CA-PFB) consistently outperformed others in economic parameters. The CA-PBB exhibited the highest net B: C in both years, with 2.03 in 2022–23 and 2.07 in 2023–24, showing ~50.4% and ~46.8% improvement over CT, respectively. In contrast, organic systems, particularly the CTbased OA-CT, demonstrated the highest cultivation costs (52.3 × 10³ INR/ha in 2022–23 and 54.9 × 10³ INR/ha in 2023–24) but did not show higher gross and net returns. Therefore, it may be concluded that conservation agriculture, particularly CA-PBB, which provides better growth, higher yields and income would be economically superior to conventional and organic agriculture.