Tillage & Crop Establishment: Bed Planting Systems

Developed through CIMMYT collaboration with Mexican researchers and farmers, bed planting systems for wheat reduce the ecological impact of wheat cropping in irrigated environments where almost half of the wheat in the developing world is produced.

The system was originally developed in Mexico’s Yaqui Valley, where more than 90% of farmers have adopted the practice. In this system, wheat is planted on top of raised beds that are usually superficially reshaped for sowing the next crop. Residues may be incorporated during reshaping or chopped and left on the soil surface. Irrigation is applied through the furrows between the beds, which greatly enhances water conservation and drainage. The great benefit for wheat production resulting from bed planting is the tremendously enhanced field access, which facilitates controlling weeds and other pests, handling nutrients, reducing tillage, and managing crop residues. Researchers at CIMMYT and institutions such as Punjab Agricultural University are currently assessing the system’s suitability for other irrigated wheat-producing areas of the developing world - for example, the Indian Punjab.

More Efficient Fertilizer and Water Use
With raised beds, nitrogen can be placed when and where the wheat plant can use it most efficiently. If nitrogen is applied just when the wheat plant starts to pull it rapidly from the soil, yields increase, grain protein content improves, and the grain’s nutritional value is enhanced. Researchers have also determined that by applying nitrogen at certain times, the amount applied can be reduced and less nitrogen is wasted through "leakage" into the environment. Beds allow farmers to tailor nitrogen applications to suit their production goals and satisfy the crop’s nutrient needs.

Lower Production Costs
The reason Yaqui Valley farmers most often give for adopting bed planting is that the system reduces production costs - by an estimated 30% in the Valley. Bed planting achieves cost savings by:

• reducing the amount of N applied;
• reducing nitrogen loss;
• lowering the number of tillage operations;
• lowering seeding rates;
• reducing lodging;
• facilitating mechanical and manual weeding; and
• reducing the need for herbicide applications.

By facilitating mechanical and hand weeding, bed planting provides options for controlling this weed more efficiently and decreases the need for ecologically damaging herbicide applications. With raised beds, lodging is less of a problem because more light reaches the canopy and strengthens the straw, and the soil around the base of the plant stays drier. Many farmers in the Punjab do not irrigate after heading precisely to avoid lodging. As a result, the crop lacks water during grain filling and yields less. With raised beds, farmers will not need to avoid this irrigation and their yields will be significantly higher.

Environmental Benefits

• improving water use efficiency and conservation (important as water becomes scarcer);
• reducing the need for applying herbicides;
• helping to control erosion;
• reducing the amount of N that "leaks" into the environment;
• providing environmentally friendly options for managing crop residues;
• reducing soil compaction; and
• bettering soil physical structure over time.

Equipment Needs
The technology is better adapted at the moment to wheat and the Facilitation Unit initiated trials in the 2000 kharif season by planting rice on beds and the results are very encouraging.

Since, it is costly to make the beds each wheat season after rice harvest, permanent beds where each succeeding crop is planted into the previous crop residues would be the best option. Bed planting system would enable crop diversification in rice-wheat areas where the introduction of soybeans, maize, cotton, mungbean, and canola on beds would be possible. This technology is particularly favorable for seed multiplication and crop production using hybrid seed since seed rates can be lowered significantly.

Bed planting system can reduce the costs of cultivation and has lot of potential for expanding the acreage of hybrids with reduced seed rate. The modified version of the Planter - named PAU Bed Planter - has been provided with attachments for mechanical weeding and deep placement of fertilizers. Bed planting also offers yield advantage in relatively finer textured soils through efficient use of various production inputs. The latest - modified - version of the bed planter, named as PAU BED PLANTER, is manufactured by a local manufacturer in Amritsar (Punjab, India) under the technical guidance of PAU Scientists (SS Dhillon) and CIMMYT. The cost of the machine is about INR 18,000.00 (US$ 425.00) ex-factory.

RWC Publications covering Tillage and Crop Establishment aspects