Browsing by Author "Jayesh Singh"

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Assessment and Restoration of Organic Carbon: Making a Solid Ground for Regenerative Agriculture in India
(CRC Press, 2024) Jayesh Singh; Ashu Singh
Agriculture is the primary source of livelihood for about 58% of the Indian population. Promoting soil carbon sequestration in agricultural land is one of the viable strategies to decelerate the observed climate changes. However, increased soil physical disturbances have aggravated the soil degradation process by accelerating erosion. Thus, reducing the magnitude and intensity of soil physical, chemical, and biological disturbance through regenerative farming/agricultural systems is essential to the management of the soil carbon sink capacity of agricultural lands. This literature hasquantified the impact of changing soil organic carbon (SOC) storage and oxidation losses with current agriculture practices. In addition, the possible options to mitigate the organic carbon losses and overall soil health degradation causing climate change are documented. Moreover, emphasis has been given to major promising regenerative practices required to be adopted by farmers with immediate effect. Along with the commencement of advanced technologies and unified rejuvenating concepts in agriculture, Indian farmers have huge opportunities to offset their own emissions. Indian agriculture possesses significant potential for carbon dioxide sequestration through enhanced soil regenerative capabilities, leading to an increase in organic carbon content. This not only improves soil and crop quality but also enhances water conservation, reduces erosion, and contributes to the global negative emission goals. Therefore, the main ways to achieve an increase in organic matter in the soil are through a regenerative agriculture system, including minimum destruction of soil aggregates and a largely continuous protective cover of living or dead organic material on the soil surface. All these regenerative farming approaches have been proved to significantly slow or even reciprocate the loss of carbon from farmer’s fields. © 2024 CRC Press.
Biochar as a Novel Feed Additive for Ruminants
(Springer Singapore, 2024) Sudhir Kumar Rajpoot; Ph. Romen Sharma; Jayesh Singh; Adarsh Kumar; S. Vijayakumar; Richa Chaudhary; Dinesh Kumar
Prosperity of animal husbandry depends on good husbandry practices including scientific feeding, encompassing macro-and micronutrients as well as additives/supplements. Biochar is a novel, relatively less-explored additive, produced through pyrolysis of biomass at temperatures of around 700 °C with no or low oxygen levels. The quality of biochar is determined by its primary biomass source, residence duration, and temperature during pyrolysis that ultimately affect its physico-chemical properties such as elemental composition, surface area, porosity, retention capacity, and overall applications. Of late, biochar, when included as feed additive, has shown the potential to improve the production performance and health of ruminants. In many studies, usage of biochar in ruminant rations at 0.5–3% has demonstrated to improve feed intake, body weight gain, feed conversion ratio, immune response, carcass attributes, and overall quality of animal products. The mechanisms underlying these effects are based on the adsorption abilities in detoxifying mycotoxins in feed raw materials, regulating plant-produced toxins, having a high affinity for pollutants, and improving the populations of beneficial gut microorganisms in ruminants. Nevertheless, it appears that more research on the usefulness of biochar in animal production is needed due to some inconsistent findings in the published literature along with a focus on safety aspects and cost economics. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024.
Meeting the Challenges of the Developing World with Regenerative Agriculture Asian Perspective
(CRC Press, 2024) Jayesh Singh; Amitava Rakshit
The present agriculture production system in the developing world is in the race of fulfilling the food demand for a surging population and maximizing profit ignoring its impact over climate change. Besides, intensive unscientific conventional tillage practices, cropping pattern, over-irrigation, excessive use of chemical inputs, exploitation of natural resource base and improper management of agricultural by-products (crop residue burning) have become the driver of biodiversity losses, water stress, heat stress, land degradation, oxidation of soil organic carbon leading to deteriorated soil health and climate change, and nutritional insecurity. In this context, when the entire system is challenged, regenerative agriculture is a prudent practice of food production, which has immense potential to heal Mother Nature. According to its proponents, regenerative agriculture is likely to have negligible negative effects on the environment and/or society. Recently, producers, merchants, agriculturists, and consumers, as well as policy makers and the commoners in general, have understood the unified impacts of regenerative agriculture, thus concerted efforts, and emphasis is being put on it. This literature deals with the present state of the art as well as possible mitigation options with a special focus on the developing world keeping Asian countries in the epicentre, as most part of it has become a global epicentre for climate change due to exhaustive utilization of water resources, land and soil for feeding the exponentially growing population. The agricultural production system based on the principle of regeneration has huge potential and promising in order to maintain productivity, decrease susceptibility towards stresses and improve resilience to climate change. © 2024 CRC Press.
Organic farming is indispensable in addressing key future challenges
(Elsevier, 2023) Jayesh Singh; Chinmay Gupta; Jarupula Suman; Anubhuti; Amitava Rakshit
The necessity for sustainable food security for the global population, as well as the need to protect the environment, mainly natural and man-made ecosystems, and landscapes, has boosted the prerequisites for organic practices that function in harmony with nature. Organic farming is an exclusive amalgamation of environment-friendly agriculture practices, which require low external inputs, thereby contributing to increased quality food availability and sustainability. This goal is accomplished by employing methods that increase crop productivity without impairing the environment or the people who live and work with it. Food produced from organic farming is nutrition rich and devoid of artificial fertilizers and pesticides. Different regions face context-specific challenges, for instance, biodiversity loss, climate change, governance, and health-related issues in converging toward biologically mediated ecosystems. For addressing all the future threats and challenges, there is an urgency for an integrated approach to biological and inorganic chemical science in agriculture which is the only viable option. In the present context, consumers are now aware of the inclusion of planetary food in their regular food recipes which prompted the farmers to act accordingly. The prime objective of this chapter is to revisit and propose the integrated organic and indigenous technical practices of agriculture to ensure food and nutritional security, climate change mitigation, restore biodiversity, and maintain the food supply chain in certain unprecedented situations, for example, COVID-19 pandemic orchestrating all efforts toward the address of Sustainable Development Goals. © 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Sustainability Assessment of High-Value Vegetable Crops Using Biopriming Approach Towards Improved Performance, Nutritional Security, and Smallholder Farmers
(Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH, 2024) Sumit Kumar Tripathi; Jayesh Singh; Amitava Rakshit
In order to meet the changing global economy and nutritional demand of the world, high-value vegetable crops can be extremely important for enhancing living standard of marginal farmers, as well as their consumption of high-quality foods and the continuity of the food supply chain and nations’ economy. With a major share under smallholder across different agroecologies, it is imperative to come up with a low-cost climate smart technology to address the vulnerable agroeco matrix. Reduced soil fertility, decreased crop productivity, and ecosystem impairment are the result of the conventional cropping systems with larger carbon footprint and lower net return complicated the issue. Most of the high-value vegetable crops are energy-intensive crop, making it a difficult option for inclusion in sustainable agriculture for smallholder farmers. Before advocating sustainability, techniques must comply with low carbon and water footprint requirement. Additionally, to lessen the reliance on synthetic agrochemicals and energy-intensive methods to feed a growing population, acceptance, adaptability, and adoption of seed biopriming among smallholder farmers are crucial. This review deals with biopriming as a potential supplementing the existing integrated plant nutrition system that could enhance plant growth and reduce abiotic stresses while increasing production and food quality with little additional energy use. In order to boost their revenue and contribute to the UNSDGs, smallholder farmers should be advocated to employ this feasible option which mimic nature. © The Author(s) under exclusive licence to Sociedad Chilena de la Ciencia del Suelo 2024.
Trichoderma as a potent bioprimer for horticultural crops
(Elsevier, 2024) Jayesh Singh; Subhadip Paul; Prabhakar Barnwal; Sweta Kumari; Deepranjan Sarkar; Manoj Parihar; Vijay Singh Meena; Amitava Rakshit
In current changing agricultural production system increased use of agrochemicals to prevent plant diseases, pests for enhancing the crop production has become a major concern. The current farming practices are having significant impact on pest and disease resurgence, reduced soil organic carbon leading to degraded soil health, and has detrimental effects on ecosystem. Therefore, one of the feasible alternatives is microbial intervention in crop production. Numerous bacteria and fungi, especially endophytic fungi, work as plant-growth-promoting rhizobacteria. Among the scientists and farmers microbial inoculants products based on Trichoderma are getting emphasis because of their potential to increase crop output, nutritional quality, and resistance to a variety of environmental challenges like pests and plant pathogens. Moreover, Trichoderma as bioinoculant has much higher potential to be disseminated and used at mass level as its culture preparation, multiplication, and application is very simple resulting to become more adaptable to the farmers. In this chapter, numerous horticultural crops have been extensively explored for the use of Trichoderma species as bioinoculant. They also enhance soil fertility and control pathogens, among other advantages. However, there are numerous commercial formulations of Trichoderma sp. available in the market. Multiple carrier materials, including talc, plant growth medium (PGM), rice bran, coco peat, and coconut husk, are utilized to extend the shelf life of microbial products. The usage of Trichoderma sp. carrier formulation varies depending on the crop’s adaptability, its availability, and the farmer’s preference. Talc-based formulations are frequently utilized among the many Trichoderma formulations. © 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.