CONTEXT

A host of best water and soil management practices (BMPs) hold promise in addressing water scarcity and land degradation to enable sustainable crop intensification in smallholder farming systems.

OBJECTIVE

This study quantifies the effect of BMPs on crop productivity, income, water saving and water balance components and identifies gaps for future research.

METHODS

This paper synthesizes the performance of BMPs and the existing data gap by reviewing 108 published studies from the Indian subcontinent which capture a diverse range of rainfall and cropping systems.

RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS

In situ conservation measures helped enhance crop yields by 200–1000 kg/ha, reduced cost of cultivation and enhanced incomes by US$ 10–200/ha/year. The BMPs were helpful in enabling annual water saving in the range of 50 mm to 300 mm by either conserving residual soil moisture or saving irrigation water resulting in enhanced water productivity. Interventions such as direct seeded rice and laser land leveling were found most effective in terms of water saving and in reducing cost of cultivation. On the other hand, ex situ rainwater harvesting interventions helped enhance groundwater recharge by harvesting an additional 50–150 mm of surface runoff which helped increase crop yields, led to sustainable crop intensification and strengthened the number of ecosystem services. Most of the published literature on in situ conservation measures are studies that were carried out at research stations, which show promise of sustainable intensification. However, greater efforts are needed to document learnings from farmer/community scale interventions for effective scaling up. There is also a gap in data availability that hampers a clear understanding of the impact of ex situ rainwater harvesting interventions and ecosystem trade-offs; moreover the data available covers short periods and only covers an area of up to 10 km². We recommend the monitoring of long-term system-level impact indicators to realize the potential of ex situ rainwater harvesting interventions in a systems perspective and better grasp the ecosystem trade-offs.

SIGNIFICANCE

More importantly, the review revealed the ample scope of integrating in situ and ex situ interventions to build system-level resilience in smallholder farming systems in order to accelerate progress towards achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

中文翻译：

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最佳管理实践对南亚小农农业系统可持续作物生产和气候适应力的影响

语境

许多最佳水土管理实践 (BMP) 有望解决水资源短缺和土地退化问题，从而在小农农业系统中实现可持续的作物集约化。

客观的

本研究量化了 BMPs 对作物生产力、收入、节水和水平衡组成部分的影响，并确定了未来研究的差距。

方法

本文通过审查来自印度次大陆的 108 项已发表的研究来综合 BMP 的性能和现有的数据差距，这些研究捕获了各种降雨和种植系统。

结果和结论

就地保护措施有助于将作物产量提高 200-1000 公斤/公顷，降低种植成本并增加收入 10-200 美元/公顷/年。BMPs 有助于通过保持残余土壤水分或节约灌溉用水来提高水生产力，从而使年节水范围在 50 毫米至 300 毫米之间。直接播种水稻和激光平整土地等干预措施在节水和降低种植成本方面最有效。另一方面，异地雨水收集干预措施通过收集额外 50-150 毫米的地表径流帮助提高地下水补给，这有助于提高作物产量，导致可持续的作物集约化并加强生态系统服务的数量。大多数已发表的关于原地保护措施的文献都是在研究站进行的研究，这些研究显示出可持续集约化的前景。然而，需要做出更大的努力来记录从农民/社区规模干预中获得的经验，以有效扩大规模。数据可用性方面也存在差距，阻碍了对非原生境影响的清晰理解雨水收集干预和生态系统权衡；此外，现有数据涵盖的时间很短，最多只能覆盖 10 km ^{2 的区域}。我们建议监测长期系统层面的影响指标，以从系统的角度实现异地雨水收集干预的潜力，更好地掌握生态系统的权衡。

意义

更重要的是，审查揭示了整合原地和非原地干预措施以在小农农业系统中建立系统级复原力以加快实现联合国可持续发展目标 (SDG) 的进程的广阔范围。