Tillage and planting management for improving the productivity and profitability of rice-wheat cropping system

A 3 year field experiment was conducted to evaluate the performance of zero till drilling, strip till drilling, bed planting and conventional sowing in wheat under varying planting methods of rice, viz. dry seeding (unpuddled), sprouted seeding (puddled), manual transplanting and mechanical transplanting by a self-propelled transplanter. The mechanical transplanting of rice produced 6.25 t/ha grain and 6.94 t/ha straw yields that were at par with manual transplanting but significantly higher than the two direct seeding methods. The mechanical transplanting was the most cost effective and energy efficient method requiring lowest specific energy (408 kcal/kg) and specific cost (49.3 US $/t); and providing maximum benefit: cost ratio (2.34) and energy output: input ratio (7.36). For wheat, strip till drilling produced higher values of growth; yield attributing characters; grain (5.67 t/ha) and straw (7.82 t/ha), followed by zero till drilling, converitional sowing and bed planting. The strip till drilling was the most cost effective and energy efficient method requiring lowest specific energy (430 kcal/kg) and specific cost (41.8 US $/t), and providing maximum benefit: cost ratio (3.67) and energy output: input ratio (6.98). However, the conventional sowing was least cost effective and energy efficient requiring maximum specific energy (543 kcal/kg) and specific cost (54.8 US $/t), and providing minimum benefit: cost ratio (2.81) and energy output: input ratio (5.52).