Irrigation Water, Deep Tillage and Gypsum Application Influences Soil Moisture regime, WUE and Sunflower Yield in Coastal Saline Soil of West Bengal
Year: 2021
Type: article
Abstract: An experiment was conducted on coastal saline soils of West Bengal to evaluate the influence of different levels of irrigation, tillage depth and gypsum application on soil moisture regime, evapotranspiration (ET), water use efficiency (WUE) and crop yield of sunflower. We found significant variation in soil moisture content, ET and WUE among various treatments. Changes in soil moisture during the crop growing periods were found due to variations in applied irrigation. Deep tillage favoured higher soil moisture content at any stages of crop growth over conventional tillage; however, at maturity conventional tillage was found to be more effective for any stages of soil moisture over deep tillage. The result shows that ET increased generally with increasing irrigation level and the effect was found more prominent under deep tillage than conventional tillage. WUE was lowest under higher ET plots, i.e. when water was applied more frequently. Higher crop yield was recorded related to high ET, possibly due to increased nutrient uptake form those frequently irrigated plots. However, higher yield came with the expanse of low WUE of crops in the presence of higher amount of irrigation water.
Authors: Avijit Manna, Arindam Sarkar, P. K. Tarafdar
Institution: Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya
Language: English
Subfield: Soil Science
Domain: Life Sciences
SDG: Zero hunger
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W3152001571