Essay on the development of Cropping System in India!
In modern agriculture, efficient management has emerged as one of the most important factors in sustaining high production levels of intensive cropping systems.
Wide-spread deficiencies of NPKS and made these 5 nutrients so practically important with fertilization that successful crop production in any part of the country depends on the use of 2 or more of these nutrients, ignoring the deficiency of any of the nutrients lowers the efficiency of other nutrients. Thus balanced use is essential because no agronomic manipulation can produce high efficiency out of an unbalanced nutrient use.
Before agro-technological revolution (Green revolution) in mid-sixties, Indian agriculture was characterized as subsistence farming with very low nutrient turn-over in soil-plant system, though sufficient consciousness was there on adequate nutrient supply through fertilizers and manures.
This is evident by the fact the very first long-term manurial experiment was initiated as early as 1985 at Kanpur. Other long-term experiments started at Pusa, Coimbatore, Chinsura, Suir, Berhampur, Cuttack, Padegaon, Saharanpur and Muzaffarnagar were designed to evaluate the effect of long-term use of fertilizers and manures in crop rotations involving rice, wheat, millet, pigeonpea and sugarcane.
Even with traditional crop varieties and low doses of fertilizers used in these experiments, role of balanced fertilization was evident at most locations, more so, on the soils inherently low in P and K. During Green Revolution, introduction of highly-yielding, photo- insensitive and nutrient-exhaustive varieties intensive cropping systems on one hand and threat of deterioration of sit health due to over-mining of nutrients on the other.
Under this changed scenario of cropping and fertilizer use, most of the findings of old experiments became redundant and of limited practical utility. Therefore 3 series of long-term experiments, were initiated by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) during 1970-71, 1977-78 and 1983-84 to evaluate the effect of as fertilizers with and without organic sources on long-term production sustainability of different cropping systems and soil health under diverse agro-climatic situations.
Besides, large number of short-and medium-term studies was also conducted under Cropping Systems Research Project and elsewhere with the objectives of rationalizing races, sources, phases and application methods of nutrients for enhancing their use efficiency in various cropping systems.