Conservation agriculture impacts on soil environment, crop rotations, weeds and residue management- A review

In Pakistan major cost of production is intensive tillage result in wasting resources, disturbing soil physical properties through clean cultivation worsening the situation. To decrease cost of production, it is the need of time to search alternative crop production 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. Conservation agriculture, including continuous soil cover, minimal soil disturbance, diverse crop rotations and integrated weed management. Conservation agriculture includes the zero tillage technology, laser land leveling and many other included in it. In the field of sowing, developed models of seed drill was manufactured and tested in the field demonstration to check ability of its working and to compare the yield. The machine is the zero seed drill and the zero till ferti drill is being used for wheat sowing. New resource conservation technologies for sowing as Happy Seeder and Zone Disk Tiller Machines works on the principle of zero tillage. 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 Pakistan.