Influence of 11 years of crop residue management on rice productivity under varied nitrogen levels in the rice-wheat cropping system

Abstract

The rice-wheat system is labour, water and energy intensive and is becoming less economical due to depleting natural resources. The novel constraints of soil health deterioration, weed shift and climate change further aggravate the problem. As an agrarian state in North-western plains of India, Punjab includes a substantial land area (2.6 million hectares) under the rice-wheat cropping system. On an annual average, 55 million tons of crop residue is generated through this cropping system, of which more than 22 million tons of agri-residue is contributed only from rice (Gupta et al. 2020). Rice straw management has always been challenging. Although, the straw generated by the cultivation of wheat is removed from the combine harvested fields for its utilisation as animal feed. However, more than 80% of rice straw is burnt in the field due to its low economic value and other issues such as labour scarcity, interference with the sowing of