Conservation Agriculture for Enhancing Resource use Efficiency and Farm Productivity

Indian Agriculture Research Institute (IARI), conducting the Training Programme in her campus from 8th March to 28 March for the benefit of the  Scientific Staff of ICAR, SAUs, and KVKs. To provide exposure to the scientist on recent advances in conservation agriculture for predominant cropping systems  To impart training on adoption of location-specific conservation agriculture practices for enhancing productivity and profitability  To disseminate the conservation agriculture based mature technologies for enhancing resource efficiency  in view of the challenges like declining factor productivity, increasing cost of cultivation, degrading natural resources and soil health deterioration has brought Indian agricultural again on the cross roads like early 1960s.

Deteriorating soil health is reflected through declining soil organic matter, soil biodiversity, multiple nutrient deficiencies and increasing levels of inputs for a given output. Therefore, there is an urgent need for developing, standardizing and promoting technologies that can reverse the resource degradation processes. The situation, thus, demands a paradigm shift from the traditional to conservation agriculture (CA).

The three principles of conservation agriculture involving minimum soil disturbance, continuous soil cover and crop diversification can be met through the adoption of various need based practices like zero tillage, minimum tillage, strip tillage, bed planting, laser land levelling, crop residue management, legume incorporation etc. also, energy efficient and cost effective system based resource conservation technologies (RCTs) are vital for improving system productivity, profitability, soil health and environmental quality, and ultimately sustaining intensive cropping systems.

Course Content -  The transition of conventional systems to conservation systems requires some site-specific alterations in sowing methodologies, nutrient, water and pest management. Thus, to advocate a region specific CA package addressing productivity enhancement and soil health sustainability must be developed by the scientists and popularized among the stakeholders.

Through this course, the attempts would be made to acquaint the participants with the latest issues and recent innovations in CA. This course would offer the theory and practical oriented understanding of the technologies for CA. This will help the participants to understand management strategies and interventions of the most critical input for better execution of CA principles for judicious resource utilization. The course is designed in a way that it would be immensely useful. It’s content will include CA practices in predominant cropping systems in India. Deliberation will be made on wide ranging topics in conservation agriculture including the main issues and opportunities for Indian Agriculture. The training been designed with an aim to provide theoretical as well as practical experiences in the ratio of 60:40, respectively.