Journal of Agronomy and Field Innovations

Background: The soils of agriculture are an important repository and source of carbon in the atmosphere and the management conditions are crucial in determining if cropland products indeed have carbon sink features or act as sources of carbon wasting away potential storage. Conservation agriculture is an approach aimed at achieving sustainability of agricultural production through three principles: minimum disturbance of soil, permanent remaining plant cover on the surface, and diverse crop rotation.
Objective: The goal of the research conducted was to assess the potential of conservation agriculture for carbon sequestration in the cropping systems of wheat and maize and to measure the changes in soil health and amount of yield.
Methods: A field experiment was conducted over three years using a randomized complete block design with four experimental variants repeated three times: conventional tillage, reduced tillage, zero tillage with residue retention, and full conservation agriculture with crop rotation.
Outcomes: Full conservation agriculture led to significant increases in soil organic carbon content (37%) and carbon sequestration rates (five times greater) compared to conventional tillage, while also achieving better microbial biomass carbon, water-use efficiency, and wheat-equivalent grain yield.
Conclusions: Conservation agriculture greatly improves carbon storage and productivity of the wheat-maize system, supporting its implementation as an effective climate-smart approach, although further multi-site evaluation is still required.