MEHAK NAGORA*, SHWETA, MEENA SEWHAG, KAUTILYA CHAUDHARY, NITIN BHARDHWAJ, SATPAL AND SUMIT BHARDWAJ
Department of Agronomy, Department of Soil Science
CCS Haryana Agricultural University Hisar-125004 (Haryana), India
*(e-mail : mehaknagora4@gmail.com)
(Received : 1 March 2022; Accepted : 21 March 2022)
SUMMARY
Animal husbandry and agriculture are inextricably linked in India. It is critical to the socio-economic development of millions of rural households, consequently making a significant contribution to the national economy. Livestock is a significant source of revenue and employs 8.8% of the workforce and supports two-thirds of the rural community. Thus, improving the livestock industry implies accelerating rural India’s economic development. The most prevalent and persistent difficulty of dairy sector is limited access to high-quality feed throughout the year, but especially during the essential lengthy dry season. Traditional legume and non-legume crop rotations as well as crop and animal integration have been phased out in favour of a single crop for grain production, negatively impacting soil health in a number of places around the country. Due to continual changes in cropping patterns and the development of HYV of rice and wheat, the opportunity for fodder production is dwindling. Land is under severe pressure to produce food for human consumption. In this regard, an experiment was conducted on wheat crop during rabi season, 2019-20 at CCS Haryana agricultural university, Hisar, Haryana. The comparison was made between the three treatments of mulches (M1– No mulch, M2– Rice straw mulch @ 6 t/ha and M3- Plastic mulch) and six wheat varieties (V1– WH 1142, V2– WH 1105, V3– HD 2967, V4– WH 1184, V5– HD 3086 and V6– WH 1124) to make the nutritional evaluation of straw of wheat so that it can be used as livestock feed also. Based on the findings, it is concluded that combined use of mulches and competitive varieties is one of the agronomic practices that has potential to sustainably increase the straw yield. It can be suggested as better tool to gain fodder advantage under prevalent cropping system without compromising the grain production.
Key words: Wheat varieties, straw, NPK Content, NPK uptake and soil health