Vol. 10, Issue 11 (2021)

Author(s):
E Sobhana, C Swaminathan, P Kannan and A Beaulah

Abstract:
A field experiment was conducted to evaluate the performance of onion based cropping system under conservation agriculture (CA) and conventional tillage (CT) practice on the system productivity, production efficiency and energy use. It was conducted for two years during 2019-20 and 2020-21 at Agricultural College and Research Institute, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Madurai, India. The experiment was laid out in a split plot design with three replications. The main plot consists of four cropping systems viz., CA - Onion - Foxtail millet (C₁), CA - Onion - Barnyard millet (C₂), CT - Onion - Foxtail millet (C₃), CT - Onion - Barnyard millet (C₄), Onion - Sole cropping (C₅) and sub plot consists of foliar application of three organics. Foliar application of organics includes, 3% Panchagavya (F₁), 1% PPFM (F₂), and 0.1% Humic acid (F₃). System productivity in terms of Onion equivalent yield (OEY) was significantly higher (9042kg ha^-1) in the CA - Onion - Barnyard millet cropping system with the foliar application of PPFM 1% than that of conventional method and sole cropping of onion. Resource use efficiency on the basis of productivity was higher under sole cropping of onion (86.33kg ha^-1 day^-1). CA - Onion - Barnyard millet recorded the highest energy use efficiency (1.6%) and energy productivity (0.35kg MJ^-1) which shows that maximum energy was effectively utilized under the system. Thus, the conservation tillage based Onion-Barnyard millet system recorded more system productivity, highest resource use efficiency (land use efficiency) and the highest energy use efficiency.