Sustainability of rice wheat cropping system in subtropics of Jammu Kashmir and Punjab

Abstract

newline In India, rice and wheat are the staple food crops cultivated on an area of 47.83 and 31.40 million ha with the production of 135.75 and 110.6 million tonnes and having yield of 2838 and 3521 kg/ha, respectively. In the North India, rice-wheat cropping system is prevalent in Haryana, Jammu region of Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab. Rice-wheat cropping system is the principle cropping system covering an area of nearly 10 million ha. There is a debatein the scientific community about the sustainability of rice-wheat cropping system, especially low land rice cultivation in the northern states due to over-exploitation of ground water and imbalanced use of fertilizers and chemical pesticides.Though, rice-wheat cropping system and its sustainability in Punjab has been a topic of many empirical studies yet, empirical evidences about it in sub-tropical Jammu region are not available. Anempirical study entitled Sustainability of rice-wheat cropping system in sub-tropics of Jammu-Kashmir and Punjab was carried out. Multistage sampling was used and a sample of 480 farmers from six districts of Punjab and three districts of Jammu-Kashmir drawn. The findings revealedthat there was a significant difference of 2.95 ha land in the average farm size owned by the Punjab and Jammu farmers as well as 4.34 ha in the leased-in landholding. Average landholding of sampled Punjab farmers was 6.31 ha and of Jammu was 1.97 ha, and the difference was statistically significant.In Jammu, majority of the farmers (70 %) had cultivated basmati varieties whereas in Punjab 77 per cent had cultivated coarse varieties. The varietal diversity index of rice was 0.131and 0.106 in Jammu and Punjab, respectively.The varietal diversity index of wheat was 0.066 and 0.080 in Jammu and Punjab, respectively. Average capacity of motor pumps (hp) and average depth of bore for tubewell installed was more in Punjabas compared to Jammuand the difference was statistically significant.The farmers of Punjab on an average used more chemical fertilizers in