Effect of Irrigation Scheduling under Different Crop Establishment Methods on Yield Attributes, Yield and Economics of Wheat

Abstract

Wheat productivity and profitability are strongly influenced by appropriate crop establishment techniques and efficient irrigation scheduling under conditions of increasing water scarcity and delayed sowing. The current study examined the impact of irrigation scheduling under various crop establishment techniques on wheat yield characteristics, yield, and economics during the Rabi season 2022–2023 at the Agronomy Research Farm of Bihar Agricultural University, Sabour Bhagalpur (Bihar). Three crop establishment techniques; conventional tillage wheat sowing (T1), zero tillage wheat sowing (T2) and wheat sown on furrow irrigated raised bed (T3) in the main plot were used in the split plot design experiment and three IW/CPE ratio-based irrigation scheduling levels are used in subplots as 4 cm irrigation at 0.8 IW/CPE (I1), 5 cm irrigation at 1.0 IW/CPE (I2), and 6 cm irrigation at 1.2 IW/CPE (I3) which was repeated three times.The findings demonstrated that the various crop establishing techniques have a major impact on yield attributes of wheat like the number of effective tillers m-2, number of grains spike-1, and 1000-grain weight however the length of the spike was not affected significantly among various crop establishment methods. Significantly higher grain yield, straw yield, and biological yield were achieved under the conventional tillage method of crop establishment which resulted in higher gross return and the net return obtained under this method of crop establishment, however, the maximum value of benefit-cost ratio was recorded under zero tillage. The irrigation depth of 5 cm irrigation at 1.0 IW/CPE ratio produced considerably more effective tillers, grain yield, straw yield, gross return, and net return than treatment I1 and was shown to be statistically at par with I3 among various irrigation scheduling levels.