Nutrient Efficient and Productive Cropping Systems for Northern Telangana Zone, India

The field experiment was carried out during 2018-19 at AICRP on Integrated Farming Systems, Regional Sugarcane and Rice Research Station, Rudrur in vertisols of Northern Telangana Zone, Telangana state, India. The experiment was performed with twelve cropping systems as treatments in Randomized Block Design (RBD) with three replications. The twelve combinations of cropping systems tested during kharif (June-October) and rabi (November – March) were rice-rice (check), maize-soybean(2:4)-tomato, maize-soybean (2:4) - rice, sunflower-chickpea (2:4), maize - chickpea, Bt cotton-soybean (1:2) on broadbed–sesame-groundnut(2:4), Bt cotton - sesame -blackgram (2:4), soybean-wheat, soybean-sunflower -chickpea (2:4), turmeric-sesame, turmeric-soybean (1:2) on flat bed-bajra and turmeric-soybean (1:2) on broadbed-sesame - blackgram (2:4).Cropping system turmeric-soybean(1:2 ) (on BBF) sesame – blackgram (2:4) recorded productivity in terms of rice equivalent yield of 23413kg ha-1 and production efficiency of 75.53Kg ha-1 day-1followed by sole turmeric-sesame (22597 kg REY ha-1 ) and 72.89Kg ha-1 day-1 and Bt.cotton+soybean (1:2) (on BBF) sesame+groundnut (2:4) (22568kg ha-1) and 75.23 Kg ha-1 day-1 over existing rice-rice (14395 kg REY ha-1 ) and 56.45Kg ha-1 day-1. Higher nutrient uptake was recorded with maize+soybean (2:4)–tomato system with 361.73 kg N ha-1, 114.43 kg P ha-1 and 318.89 kg K ha-1. Hence under nutrient stressed environment and low input management system maize+soybean (2:4) –tomato, can be recommended in comparision to existing rice-rice cropping system in irrigated situations for vertisols of Telangana.