Increasing productivity of the rice-wheat system (RW) in the Eastern Gangetic Plains (EGP) is a major challenge in the context of the various economic (increasing cost of labour, irrigation water, and energy) and bio-physical (water scarcity, depletion of soil fertility, and climatic variability) constraints. We evaluated the performance of three RW system intensification options with different management interventions over two years, comparing a conventional RW rotation (CS₁), with two stages of conservation agriculture (CA) interventions, (i) the simple inclusion of mungbean (CS₂), and (ii) the inclusion of mungbean together with full CA implementation (CS₃) at two sites in the EGP that differed with respect to soil type, water table dynamics, and agro-climatic conditions. Our evaluation focussed on improving system productivity and resource use efficiency. The addition of mungbean into the conventional RW rotation produced significantly higher system productivity (rice equivalent yield, REY) compared with the existing double-crop rotation across sites. The baseline system was enhanced further when CA-based management practices were adopted, however, the magnitude of system benefit from CA was site and situation-specific. At the fine-textured soil site, gains were observed in system production (by 5.4 %), irrigation water productivity (WP_I, by 40 %), and N use efficiency (NUE, by 5%) for the CA-based intensified system (CS₃) in comparison with the CT-based intensified system (CS₂). The average wheat yield and WP_I in the zero-till (ZT) system (CS₃) was always higher than in the conventional (CT) systems (CS₂ and CS₃), mainly due to enhanced wheat rooting after unpuddled rice across the sites. At the fine-textured soil site, the cessation of puddling in rice cropping maintained rice grain yield, while increasing WP_I. However, in the coarse-textured soil site, the cessation of puddling resulted in lower rice grain production (by 14 %), coupled with much higher (1.3 times) irrigation water requirement than the conventional puddled rice systems (CS₂ and CS₃) in the second year due to increased percolation rate, which negatively impacted the overall performance of the CA-based system (CS₃). Therefore, the modification of the traditional CT-based system to an intensified CA-based approach can improve the productivity of the RW system in terms of yield of the component crops as well as better NUE and WP_I in fine-textured soil, while the feasibility of the full CA system in coarse-textured soil seems limited due to poor performance of rice, and requires further research focusing on the best rice establishment option.

在各种经济（劳动力成本，灌溉用水和能源成本增加）和生物物理（缺水，土壤肥力的枯竭和气候变化）的限制。我们比较了传统的RW轮换（CS ₁）和两个阶段的保护性农业（CA）干预，比较了三种RW强化措施在两年内采用不同管理干预措施的效果，（i）绿豆的简单纳入（CS ₂），以及（ii）将绿豆与完整的CA实施一起纳入（CS ₃）在EGP中的两个地点，这两个地点在土壤类型，地下水位动态和农业气候条件方面有所不同。我们的评估重点在于提高系统生产率和资源利用效率。与现有的跨站双作轮作相比，在常规的RW轮作中添加绿豆可显着提高系统生产率（大米当量产量，REY）。当采用基于CA的管理实践时，基线系统得到了进一步的增强，但是，CA带来的系统收益的大小是针对特定地点和特定情况的。在基于CA的集约化系统中，在质地较细的土壤场所，系统产量（增加5.4％），灌溉水生产率（WP _I减少40％）和氮素利用效率（NUE减少5％）有所增加。 （CS ₃）与基于CT的增强系统（CS ₂）相比。零耕（ZT）系统（CS ₃）的平均小麦产量和WP _I始终高于常规（CT）系统（CS ₂和CS ₃），这主要是因为在整个世界上未结实的水稻后小麦的生根增强了网站。在精细质感土场地，在稻作炼铁停止保持水稻产量，同时增加WP_我。但是，在质地粗糙的土壤中，停止混水会导致水稻籽粒产量降低（降低14％），并且灌溉水的需求量比传统的混水稻系统（CS ₂和CS ₃）高得多（1.3倍））在第二年由于渗透率增加而受到不利影响，这对基于CA的系统（CS ₃）的整体性能产生了负面影响。因此，传统的CT为基础的系统的的修改加强了基于CA的方法可以改善部分农作物的产量，以及更好的NUE和WP方面的RW系统的生产率_我在精细质感的土壤，而由于稻米性能差，在粗糙的土壤中使用完整CA系统的可行性似乎受到限制，因此需要针对最佳稻米设置选项进行进一步研究。