Climate Smart Agriculture Influences Soil Enzymes Activity under Cereal-based Systems of North-West India

Soil enzyme activities are important indicators of changes in management practices in crop production systems. Measurements of different soil quality parameters are essential for assessing the impact of soil and crop management practices. Keeping this in view, an experiment was conducted to evaluate the enzyme activities namely, dehydrogenase (DHA), β-glucosidase, acid and alkaline phosphatase, fluorescein diacetate hydrolases (FDH), cellulase, urease and arylsulphatase in soil after 7 years of the experimentation with same management practices. The treatments were conventional rice-wheat system (Sc1), partial conservation agriculture (CA)-based rice-wheat-mungbean system (Sc2), partial climate smart agriculture (CSA)-based rice-wheat-mungbean system (Sc3), partial CSA-based maize-wheat-mungbean system (Sc4), full CSAbased rice-wheat-mungbean system (Sc5), and full CSA-based maize-wheat-mungbean system (Sc6). Soil samples were collected before sowing, maximum tillering, flowering, and at harvest of wheat crop from surface layer (0-15 cm soil depth). Partial CA-based system (Sc2) exhibited higher DHA activity over others. Also DHA activity in soil was higher at maximum tillering (16%), flowering (11%) and after harvesting (3%) in rice-based CSA systems (mean of Sc3 and Sc5) over maize-based systems (mean of Sc4 and Sc6). On average, β-glucosidase and alkaline phosphatase activity was significantly higher in soils of maize based systems than rice based systems. On average, improved practices (CA and CSA) based scenarios (Sc2-Sc6) recorded 15 per cent higher FDH activity over farmers’ practice/ CT (Sc1). Significant interaction effect was observed between the managements and enzyme activities. The CSA managements were found beneficial in improving soil enzyme activities and thereby helping in improving nutrient cycling besides influencing other soil properties in long run.