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Now till zero but harvest more

Bindu Shajan Perappadan

NEW DELHI: This innovation has already made its mark, presenting during its "trial period" a cumulative benefit estimated at crores of rupees and increased crop yield for the framers. And now its "creators" are offering it to the country hoping for quicker and more large-scale adoption of the technology. Called "zero till seed drill technology", the project has been implemented by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research under the National Agricultural Technology Project (NATP) of the World Bank.

The biggest benefit it offers to the farmers is in terms of savings on cost of cultivation as expenses towards land preparation (seedbed preparation) are eliminated. The technology, even though it was known for some time, was not popular in the country for lack of suitable machinery.

Speaking about this latest technology and how it has directly benefited the farmer, NATP National Coordinator (Component-I) N.T. Yaduraju said: "The technology has shown saving in fuel up to 37 to 70 litres per hectare, advancement in sowing time of wheat by 2-4 weeks, saving in water up to 25-30 per cent, reduction in the incidence of a major invasive weed in wheat up to 40-50 per cent and increase in yield by 5-15 per cent over the conventional sowing system."

In India the rice-wheat cropping system is one of the important cropping systems, but according to experts it is becoming less and less sustainable due to a variety of reasons.

"Zero till seed drill technology allows direct seeding of the crop without any preparatory tillage after harvesting of a previous crop. Zero till cultivation is widely practiced worldwide as resource conservation technology as intensive tillage makes the field vulnerable for soil erosion. The performance of zero tillage in wheat crop in rice-wheat system was evaluated in the Indo-Gangetic plain zone," added Dr. Yaduraju.

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