Wheat is now cultivated in over 27 million hectares under different cropping sequences & as a companion crop. In this process, issues related to the sustainability of the production system has arisen. Better access to inputs such as water, seed, fertilizer, energy, machines, pesticides assured market prize & farmers friendly policies have all enabled the transformation of Indian agriculture.

Wheat is now cultivated under varying crop sequences & under different maturity periods. Agronomic experiments clearly show that the cultural practices followed for the preceding crop influence the yield of the succeeding crop. The rooting pattern, extent of biomass of the preceding crop setting incorporated in soil, pesticide sprayed & several such actions influence the productivity of the cropping system.

Biomass disposal

           For every four tonnes of wheat of rice nearly six tonnes of straw are produced. In India more than 200 million tonnes of straw (of rice &wheat) are produced annually & much of it goes waste. The crop biomass contains a great share of the nutrients removed by the plant.

           The straw burning practice is unacceptable as it is against good environmental practices. Bulk of the rice straw is used for packing fruits or as bedding material in cattlesheds. In other words, the biomass generated from the R/W crop sequence is not getting back to the farm lands & this impair the nutrient recycling, soil organic matter build up & good rhizosphere population.

            New tillage practices like zero tillage technique, sowing wheat immediately after rice harvest with rotovator cum seed drill & the raised bed technology has several advantages. These new tillage techniques must be popularized among the farmers.

Need to increase fertilizer dose-

           Based on experimental evidences, now for the varieties of group such as PBW- 343, HD- 2687, UP- 2338, HUW- 542150 kg/ha of N is recommended. Once this revision was made, the issue of sustainability was partially addressed.

Farming system as one activity-

           Now there is sufficient experimental evidence to show that enriched FYM improves the nutrient availability & increases wheat yield. Farmers have recognized Burseem growing as a healthy practice in place of green manure & have well adopted it to sustain the R/W system.

           During the last two decades, area increase of wheat is just marginal & it is the productivity increase that has happened. This was possible due to the release of a number of wheat varieties that fit into various crop sequences. The wheat programmer produces breeder seed of at least 60 different varieties in a year & more than 1,200 tonnes are produced. When this flows into the seed chain at field level, a dynamic varietal pattern is maintained. If we are to sustain the wheat yields& protect our crop from the array of diseases then there is no option but to strengthen this strategy.