Residue and Irrigation Management for Optimizing Productivity and Profitability of Wheat in Ambala (Haryana)

Background: The rice-wheat cropping system in Haryana, Western Uttar Pradesh and Punjab faces sustainability risks due to soil fertility depletion, rising cultivation costs and environmental pollution hazards because of the large-scale burning of rice crop residues. Two-year field experiments investigated wheat sowing techniques by keeping rice crop residues under various irrigation schedules to optimize production and economic outcomes in Ambala, Haryana. Three sowing methods, i.e., conventional sowing (CS), Happy Seeder (HS) and Super Seeder (SS) and four irrigations scheduling, i.e., scheduling at critical growth stages (IS1), IW/CPE ratio 0.9 with first irrigation at CRI (IS2), IW/CPE ratio for whole crop season (IS3) and depletion of 50% available soil moisture (IS4). Methods: Happy Seeder sown wheat exhibited a significantly higher average yield of 58.38 q ha-1 than conventional (57.69 q ha-1) and Super seeder (56.85 q ha-1) sown wheat. Overall, Happy Seeder and irrigation schedule (IS3) produces the highest grain yield of 65.23, 63.56 and 64.40 q ha-1 in the first, second year and pooled year results. In conventional sowing of wheat, the average total cultivation cost was 107134.02 and 110907.71 Rs ha-1, which was less in Happy Seeder sown wheat, i.e., 99077.07 and 102932.27 Rs. ha-1 respectively, in the year 2021-22 and 2022-23. Result: The average benefit-cost ratio (BCR) for the happy seeder technique, 1.42 and 1.44, outperforms the conventional sowing wheat approach during both years of experiments. The recent wheat sowing using happy seeder under residue mulching conditions, must adopt modified irrigation scheduling practices to enhance yield and profitability, contributing to sustainable agricultural practices. The study highlights the potential of recent agricultural practices to boost farmer income, promote sustainable agricultural growth and environment conservation.