R. Bana

Impact of crop establishment practices and herbicide sequencing on weed control, maize productivity, and soil microbial dynamics.

Maize (Zea mays L.) is a globally important cereal cultivated across diverse agro-ecological regions due to its remarkable phenotypic plasticity and the highest genetic yield potential. Being a wet season crop in South Asia, weeds always remain a big challenge in harnessing its full potential. A two-year study was conducted by keeping three crop establishment methods viz., raised bed + residue (RB + R), zero tillage + residue (ZT + R) and conventional tillage + residue (CT + R) in main plots and five herbicidal treatments; pyroxasulfone as pre-emergence (PRE), pyroxasulfone (PRE) fb tembotrione as post-emergence (PST), atrazine (PRE) fb tembotrione (PST), unweeded check (UWC) and weed free check (WFC) in sub-plots and were executed in a split-plot design with three replications. Results indicated that comparatively lesser weed population and weed dry matter accumulation of all the weed flora present in the field were noted on RB + R compared to ZT + R and CT + R systems. Similarly, higher growth and yield of maize crop was obtained under RB + R compared to ZT + R and CT + R. Among different weed control treatments, pyroxasulfone fb tembotrione resulted in a substantial decline in the populations of grassy, broad-leaved weeds, and sedges by 66.2%, 58.2% and 41.2%, respectively (2-year mean) compared to the UWC. Significantly higher weed control efficiency (80.1%), weed control index (77.2%) and lowest weed index (8.56%) was found with pyroxasulfone fb tembotrione compared to other herbicide treatments. Pyroxasulfone fb tembotrione recorded grain yield enhancement of 44.8% over UWC. Therefore, it can be concluded that application of pyroxasulfone fb tembotrione in maize crop with raised bed coupled with residues, enhances maize productivity owing to significant decline in weed growth.

Diverse weed control approaches for sustainable vegetable peas production: Insights into herbicide residues and soil biology

Yield Gaps in Major Crops of India: A Review of Drivers and Sustainable Intensification Pathways

India faces large, persistent yield gaps across eight major crops—wheat, rice, maize, soybean, pulses, mustard, cotton, and sugarcane—that collectively limit food security and rural income. This review synthesises evidence from over 100 peer-reviewed studies (1990–2024) to provide the first comprehensive, multi-crop, agro-climatically resolved yield gap analysis for India. Applying the three-tier framework of potential yield (Yp), attainable yield (Ya), and farmer yield (Yf), exploitable yield gaps are quantified at national and agro-climatic zone level, ranked limiting factors are identified, and projected climate change impacts are assessed. Yield gaps range from 20 to 35% in irrigated rice of the north-western Indo-Gangetic Plain to 60–75% in rainfed cotton and pulses of the semi-arid tropics. Yield gaps of blackgram across 20 major districts average 515 kg ha−1, driven by moisture stress, biotic pressure, and management constraints. Nitrogen management, irrigation access, variety adoption, and sowing-date optimisation collectively explain 80–85% of exploitable gaps, while nitrogen and irrigation alone account for 40–58%. Closing 50% of exploitable yield gaps could add approximately 100 million tonnes of food grain annually without expanding cultivated area, directly supporting Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 2). However, climate change is projected to widen yield gaps of rainfed rice by 15–30% by the 2040s under Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5. Beyond this crop-by-crop synthesis, the review proposes a constraint-transition framework in which the dominant type of limiting factor shifts predictably from biophysical (water, climate) in the largest-gap rainfed systems to agronomic management (nitrogen, sowing date, variety) at intermediate gap levels and to institutional and socioeconomic constraints (credit, extension, land tenure, gender) as gaps narrow in the best-resourced irrigated systems, thus offering a conceptual lens for prioritising interventions by development stage rather than by crop alone.