#zero tillage

Soil degradation, climate change and increasing cost of inputs are serious challenges for crop production in dryland areas of Pakistan. Mismanagement of natural resources through clean cultivation and intensive tillage are also worsening the situation. Therefore, it is the need of time to search alternative systems. Conservation agriculture (CA) is an emerging technology, which serves as an alternate system has been successfully adopted worldwide for sustainable agriculture, to improve soil properties, mitigate climate change, enhance crop yield and reduce input cost, but dryland areas of Pakistan seem to have missed the opportunity. The accessible information indicate that research study so for conducted in dryland areas of Pakistan are short term and that conservation agriculture (CA) has potential to improve soil structural stability by enhancing organic matter contents, provide equal yield and economically benefit by reducing input cost. There is a need to establish long term, multi-location and collaborative research experiments on different aspects of CA along with the use of computer based models for long term simulations. On farm practice of CA is scarce due to social hindrance, unavailability of local ZT drills, alternative uses of residue. There are big opportunities of CA in dryland areas of Pakistan as climate, soils and crop diversity are conducive to that. Promotion of CA can be enhanced by encouraging local manufacture of zero tillage drills and on farm trainings of the community. CA is the need of hour to combat desertification and provide a healthy environment for coming generations and resource poor farmers of dryland areas of Pakistan.

Management of combine harvested paddy residue in field though conventional method is becoming an environmental concern to soil health, transport and surrounding population living in the area of wheat-rice cropping system of province Punjab, Pakistan. In common, cultivators prefer to burn their paddy field as an easy and cost effective method of residue disposal. Burning of rice residue in field decreases soil fertility, moisture contents, and dangerous for the life of bio-control microbial insects that are beneficial for crop production.From last few years, issue of smog (mixture of smoke and fog) is rising. When smoke meet with fog, a new heavy smoke is produced called smog causing many road accidents and respiratory diseasesto residents’ invicinity. To overcome this problem a new machinewas manufactured at Sharif Engineering Works, Khurrianwala Faisalabad under the joint project of SUMMIT and USDA. Purpose of present study was to compare the performance of newly develop machine Happy seeder (T1) with zero seed drill (T2), wheat seed drill (T3) and conventional broadcasting method (T4). Experiment was conducted in the combine harvested rice residue field. Each treatment was replicated with three experimental plots for the observation of germination rate, vigor index, number of tillers, spike length, spikelet per spike, 1000 grain weight and yield. Data collected was statistically analyzed at 5% level of significance. It was concluded from the experiment that the treatment T1Happy seeder had best performance for wheat production in rice-residue field.

Management of combine harvested paddy residue in field though conventional method is becoming an environmental concern to soil health, transport and surrounding population living in the area of wheat-rice cropping system of province Punjab, Pakistan. In common, cultivators prefer to burn their paddy field as an easy and cost effective method of residue disposal. Burning of rice residue in field decreases soil fertility, moisture contents, and dangerous for the life of bio-control microbial insects that are beneficial for crop production.From last few years, issue of smog (mixture of smoke and fog) is rising. When smoke meet with fog, a new heavy smoke is produced called smog causing many road accidents and respiratory diseasesto residents’ invicinity. To overcome this problem a new machinewas manufactured at Sharif Engineering Works, Khurrianwala Faisalabad under the joint project of SUMMIT and USDA. Purpose of present study was to compare the performance of newly develop machine Happy seeder (T1) with zero seed drill (T2), wheat seed drill (T3) and conventional broadcasting method (T4). Experiment was conducted in the combine harvested rice residue field. Each treatment was replicated with three experimental plots for the observation of germination rate, vigor index, number of tillers, spike length, spikelet per spike, 1000 grain weight and yield. Data collected was statistically analyzed at 5% level of significance. It was concluded from the experiment that the treatment T1Happy seeder had best performance for wheat production in rice-residue field.