Bhawna Babal

Global agriculture is currently facing two major crises: increasing water scarcity and the growing demand for high quality and nutritionally rich food. These challenges are further complicated by c...

Inadequate drainage and the application of salty irrigation waterinduced salinity stress, poses a major constraint to agricultural productivity, especially in saline–arid regions. Shallow subsurface drainage has emerged as a potential technique for salinity management; however, its implications for crop physiological and biochemical responses remain unclear. Therefore, a two-year lysimetric study was undertaken in a split-split plot design investigating cut-soiler-based preferential shallow subsurface drainage (PSSD), soil type (saline sandy loam and normal silty clay loam), and irrigation water salinity levels (4, 8 and 12 dS m⁻¹) to evaluate the effectiveness of rice-residue-filled cut-soiler PSSD in mitigating salinity stress in pearl millet and mustard crops. The cut-soiler PSSD reduced root-zone salinity to around 60.0% by the end of experimentation. Lower root-zone salinity under cut-soiler PSSD alleviated osmotic and ionic stress by reducing hydrogen peroxide (11.0–14.6%), membrane injury (22.7–40.8%), lipid peroxidation (20.0–25.0%), proline accumulation (26.0–37.0%) and improving the Na⁺/K⁺ ratio (44.0%). Antioxidant enzyme activities were also significantly moderated under the cut-soiler PSSD. These physiological and biochemical improvements resulted in significant increases in grain and seed yield of pearl millet (23.5%) and mustard (31.4%), respectively. The findings of this study indicate that cut-soiler PSSD is an effective strategy to mitigate salinity stress at the physiological and biochemical level and offers sustainable management strategies for salt-affected agro-ecosystems.

The study assessed the impact of various drip irrigation and fertigation strategies on cucumber growth under protected cultivation. Over two seasons, surface drip (I1) was compared with subsurface drip irrigation (I2) under five fertigation treatments (F1-F5). Results revealed that I2 significantly improved growth parameters and yield over I1, including 5.5% reduction in days to 50 per cent flowering and 4.3% decrease in days to first picking. Fruit count and plant height increased by 14.1% and 7.8%, respectively, with a 14.9% rise in yield. Among fertigation treatments, F3 (compost tea with 75% NPK) outperformed the recommended practice F5 (100% NPK), showing a 7.8% faster approach to 50% flowering and reduced the number of days to first picking by 7.7%. F3 led to a 1.2% higher fruit count and a 6.2 and 14.7% increase in plant height and yield, respectively. The findings underscore the effectiveness of subsurface drip irrigation and integrated fertigation, particularly the F3, in enhancing cucumber production under protected conditions. The research highlights the potential of these practices in improving crop productivity and sustainability, especially in water-scarce areas.

The development of more productive and sustainable agricultural systems essentially requires the assessment of the population and diversity of microorganisms in soils under different management practices. The conservation agriculture (CA) systems are considered very important for soil health, biodiversity and environmental quality. But the use of herbicides is substantially increased under CA systems which may cause adverse impacts on human and ecosystem health. Moreover, the literature pertaining to the consequence of herbicides on soil microorganisms is quite controversial, and largely based either on laboratory or short-term field experiments. Therefore, the impact of pendimethalin herbicide on the population of Azotobacter and phosphorus solubilising bacteria (PSB) under CA system was taken up during _summer, 2019_ at Soil Research Farm, CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar in alluvial sandy loam soil (Typic Haplustept). The experiment included two cropping systems (mungbean - wheat and sorghum - wheat), with three tillage practices, viz., zero tillage with surface retention of crop residues in both summer and winter seasons (ZT-ZT), conventional tillage in summer and zero tillage with residue retention in winter (CT-ZT) and conventional tillage in both seasons (CT-CT). Resultes revealed an increase in the population of both Azotobacter and PSB under ZT-ZT as compared to CT-CT practice at different depths. In surface 0-5 cm soil, the ZT-ZT practice increased the population of Azotobacter and PSB by 65.6 and 30.0%, respectively, over CT-CT practice in 13 years of experimentation. Application of pendimethalin provided stimulation to the population of both the microbes till 15th day of it application under all the tillage practices. This stimulation in population was of almost similar order (21-23%) for under ZT-ZT practice but greater stimulation (29.8%) in the population of Azotobacter as compared to PSB (13.5%) under CT-CT practice accentuated Azotobacter to be more efficient in utilizing easily available pendimethalin for their augmentation of the proliferation.. The influence of cropping systems on microbes upon application of pendimethalin was largely non-significant