Author(s):

RK Naresh, RK Gupta and AS Panwar

Abstract: In agricultural ecosystem, soil organic carbon dynamics (SOC) and carbon sequestration (CS) are important indexes in estimating the soil carbon stock, soil fertility and soil quality. This paper examines the temporal and spatial variation of SOC and CS in a Typic soil area in north western IGP. The seasonal variation of SOC was attributed to plant growth and crop residue returning back to soil, while the spatial variation was mainly resulted from the fertilization practice. Maintaining the food security of about 127 crore populations is the hard challenge for Indian agriculture where 10 million hectare land is occupied by rice- wheat cropping system. In most of the rice cultivating region the climatic, resource input and management factors forces to adopt the lowland raising of paddy with puddling, which is describes as the boon for paddy; but curse for succeeding upland wheat crop because of disturbed soil physico- chemical and biological properties. Tillage and nutrient management may become as the solution for maintaining the productivity of both the crops with sustainability. Conservation management of degraded land has the potential to build soil fertility, restore soil functions as a consequence of surface soil organic matter accumulation. Literature from different sources were reviewed and synthesized to: (i) quantitatively evaluate the magnitude and rate of soil organic C (SOC) sequestration with conservation agricultural management; (ii) evaluate how conservation management affects surface SOC accumulation and its implications on ecosystem services; and (iii) recommend practical soil sampling strategies based on spatial and temporal issues to improve the detection of statistically significant SOC sequestration. Soil organic C sequestration was 0.45±0.04MgC ha⁻¹ yr⁻¹ with conservation tillage compared with conventional tillage cropland.

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