Introduction:

• Sustainable agriculture is the way of farming according to the location specific ecosystem and study of relationships between organisms and their environment.
• Such systems must be resource conserving, socially supportive, commercially competitive and environmentally sound.
• These systems generally avoid the usage of synthetically compounded fertilizers, pesticides, growth regulators, and livestock feed additives, instead relying upon crop rotations, crop residues, animal manures, off farm organic wastes, and mineral bearing rocks to maintain soil fertility and productivity.
• As both natural resource soil and water are the limiting resources for the crops and these are also indiscriminately used based on the crops.
• As there is a change in climatic patterns and monsoon is being erratic the necessary intervention should be made in cropping pattern to sustain food and economic security.

Different Cropping pattern and issues associated with them:

Rice-Wheat :

• Rice-Wheat system is the most widely adopted cropping system in the country and has become mainstay of cereal production.
• The states of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Bihar, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh are now the heart land of rice-wheat cropping system with an estimated area of 11 million hectares.
• Important issues emerging as a threat to the sustainability of rice-wheat system are over mining of nutrients from soil, disturbed soil aggregates due to puddling in rice, decreasing response to nutrients, declining ground water table, build up of diseases/pests & phalaris minor , low input use efficiency in north western plains, low use of fertilizer in eastern and central india, lack of appropriate varietal combination.

Rice-Rice :

• Rice-rice is the popular cropping system in irrigated lands in humid and coastal ecosystems of Orissa, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala and it is spread over an area of six million hectares.
• The major issues in sustaining productivity of rice-rice system are deterioration in soil physical conditions, micronutrient deficiency, poor efficiency of nitrogen use, imbalance in use of nutrients, non-availability of appropriate transplanter to mitigate labour shortage during critical period of transplanting, build up of obnoxious weeds such as echinochloa crusgalli and non-availability of suitable control measures.

Rice-Mustard :

• From a view point of food security and national economy, rice-rapeseed/mustard may be considered as an important cropping system.
• In this cropping system, the yield of Rice is satisfactory in all ecosystems, however, wide variations in yield of mustard were recorded from one ecosystem to another.
• Nevertheless, adoption of appropriate high yielding rice and mustard varieties, adequately supported by improved production technology, ensures desired productivity of the system.

Maize-Wheat :

• Among maize-wheat growing areas, maize is the principal crop of Kharif season in northern hills of the country but plains of northern states like Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar also have sizeable acreage under this crop.
• Poor maize-wheat yield has been reported from Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Tripura, Eastern Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.
• There are number of reasons for poor yield but the most significant are sowing time, poor plant population, poor weed management, poor use of organic and inorganic fertilizers.

Sugarcane-Wheat :

• Sugarcane is grown in north India (Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana and Bihar), which account for 68 per cent of the total area under sugarcane, sugarcane-ratoon-wheat is the most important crop sequence.
• The system is also gaining importance in Jorhat, Sibsagar and Sonitpur districts of Assam; Ahmedanagar and Kolhapur district of Maharashtra and Belgaum district of Karnataka. The other states where the system covers considerable area under sugarcanewheat are Haryana, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.
• Problems in sugarcane-wheat system are late planting of sugarcane as well as wheat, imbalance and inadequate use of nutrients, poor nitrogen use efficiency in sugarcane, low productivity of ratoon due to poor sprouting of winter harvested sugarcane in north India, build up of trianthema partulacastrum and cyprus rotundus in sugarcane, stubble of sugarcane pose tillage problem for succeeding crops and need to be managed properly.

Cotton-Wheat :

• Cotton is widely grown in alluvial soils of north India (Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Western Uttar Pradesh) and black cotton soils of central India (Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka).
• With the availability of short duration varieties of cotton, cotton-wheat cropping system has become dominant in North. About 70-80 per cent area of cotton is covered under this system.
• In Central region also, wherever irrigation is available, cotton-wheat is practiced.
• The major issues of concern in cotton-wheat cropping system are delayed planting of succeeding wheat after harvest of cotton, stubbles of cotton create problem of tillage operations and poor tilth for wheat, susceptibility of high yielding varieties of cotton to boll worm and white fly and consequently high cost on their control leading to unsustainability, poor nitrogen use efficiency in cotton results in low productivity of the system, appropriate technology for intercropping in widely spaced cotton is needed to be developed.

LEGUME BASED CROPPING SYSTEMS :

• Legume crops (pulses and oilseeds) are popular for their suitability in different cropping systems.
• Recent advances in the development of large number of varieties of pulse and oilseed crops, varying largely for maturity duration, have made it possible to include them in irrigated crop sequences.
• The popular cropping systems are pigeon pea-wheat in Madhya Pradesh and groundnut wheat in Gujarat, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh and groundnut-sorghum in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.
• The major issues in legume based cropping systems are no technological breakthrough has been achieved so far in respect of yield barriers, particularly in legumes, susceptibility of the pulses to aberrant weather conditions especially water logging and adverse soils making them highly unstable in performance, high susceptibility to diseases and pests, low harvest index, flower drop, indeterminate growth habit and very poor response to fertilizers and water in most of the grain legumes.