Soil degradation in the semi-arid tropics (SAT) is mainly responsible for low crop and water productivity. In Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan states in India, the soil analyses of farmers' fields revealed widespread deficiencies of S (9-96%), B (17-100%) and Zn (22-97%) along with that of P (25-92%). Soil organic C was deficient in 7-84% fields indicating specifically N deficiencies and poor soil health in general. During on-farm evaluations in rainy seasons 2010 and 2011, the soil test based addition of deficient nutrient fertilizers as balanced nutrition (BN) increased crop yields by 6-40% (benefit to cost ratios of 0.81-4.28) through enhanced rainwater use efficiency. The integrated nutrient management (INM), however, decreased the use of chemical fertilizers in BN by up to 50% through on-farm produced vermicompost and recorded yields at par or more than BN with far better benefit to cost ratios (2.26-10.2). Soybean grain S and Zn contents improved with INM. Applied S, B, Zn and vermicompost showed residual benefits as increased crop yields for succeeding three seasons. Hence, results showed INM/BN was economically beneficial for producing more food, while leading to resilience building of SAT production systems.

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In Indian semi‐arid tropics (SATs), low water and crop productivity in Vertisols and associated soils are mainly due to poor land management and erratic and low rainfall occurrence. This study was conducted from 2014 to 2016 at the ICRISAT in India to test the effect of broad bed furrows (BBF) as land water management against conventional flatbed planting for improving soil water content (SWC) and water and crop productivity of three cropping systems: sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench]–chickpea (Cicer arientinum L.) and maize (Zea mays)–groundnut (Arachis hypogaea L.) as sequential and pearl millet [Pennisetum glaucum (L.)] + pigeonpea [Cajanus cajan (L.) Millsp.] as intercropping, grown under different nutrients management involving macronutrients (N, P, and K) only and combined application of macro‐ and micronutrients. The results stated that the SWC in BBF was higher over flatbed by 9.35–10.44% in 0‐ to 0.3‐m, 4.56–9.30% in 0.3‐ to 0.6‐m and 3.85–5.26% in 0.6‐ to 1.05‐m soil depths during the cropping season. Moreover, depletion of the soil water through plant uptake was higher in BBF than in flatbed. Among the cropping systems, sorghum–chickpea was the best in bringing highest system equivalent yield and water productivity with the combined application of macro‐ and micronutrients. The BBF minimized water stress at critical crop growth stages leading to increase crop yield and water productivity in SATs. Thus, BBF along with the application of macro‐ and micronutrients could be an adaptation strategy to mitigate erratic rainfall due to climate change in SATs.

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