Long-term conservation agriculture and best nutrient management improves productivity and profitability coupled with soil properties of a maize-chickpea rotation.

Conservation agriculture (CA)-based practices have been promoted and recouped, as they hold the potential to enhance farm profits besides a consistent improvement in soil properties. A 7 years' field experiment consisting of three crop establishment practices viz., zero-till flatbed (ZTFB), permanent beds (PNB), conventional system (CT) along with the three-nutrient management; nutrient expert-based application (NE), recommended fertilization (RDF), and farmers' fertilizer practice (FFP), was carried out from 2013 to 2020. The CA-based practices (ZTFB/PNB) produced 13.9-17.6% greater maize grain-equivalent yield (MGEY) compared to the CT, while NE and RDF had 10.7-20% greater MGEY than the FFP. PNB and ZTFB gave 28.8% and 24% additional net returns than CT, while NE and RDF had 22.8% and 17.4% greater returns, respectively over FFP. PNB and ZTFB had 2.3-4.1% (0.0-0.20 m soil layers) lower bulk density than the CT. Furthermore, microbial biomass carbon (MBC) increased by 8-19% (0.0-0.50 m soil layers) in ZTFB/PNB over the CT, and by 7.6-11.0% in NE/RDF over FFP. Hence, CA-based crop establishment coupled with the NE or RDF could enhance the yields, farm profits, soil properties of the maize-chickpea rotation, thereby, could sustain production in the long run.