Resource Conservation Technologies (RCTs)-Needs and future prospects: A review

Continuous use of conventional farming practices with conventional tillage and burning crop residues has degraded the soil resource base and intensified soil degradation with concomitant decrease in crop production capacity. Further, escalating fuel, fertilizers and other input costs; necessitates the effective use of resources in agriculture. Conservation agriculture (CA) consists of four principles: (i) minimizing mechanical soil disturbance and seeding directly into untilled soil, (ii) using cover crops and/or crop residues (mainly residue retention), (iii) diversification of crops in associations, sequences and rotations and (iv) controlled traffic that lessen soil compaction. The CA technologies involving no- or minimum-tillage with direct seeding and bed planting, residue management and crop diversification have potential for improving productivity and soil quality, mainly by soil organic matter build-up. Conservation agriculture systems appear to be appealing options to achieve sustainable and intensive crop production under different agroecological environments because they use available resources efficiently and maintain soil fertility. However, there is a need for wider scale testing of these new technologies under diverse production systems, as the CA technologies are site specific and therefore appraisal of CA is important to have significant adoption.