Initiating conservation agriculture shows reduced soil CO₂ emissions and improved soil aggregate stability in the first season in rainfed cropping in India

The reported study was undertaken to determine which soil health indicators showed measurable signs of improvement, during the first year process introducing a Conservation Agriculture (CA) cropping system in rainfed areas Madhya Pradesh, India. Soil aggregate stability, soil-atmosphere CO2 fluxes, water infiltration, moisture, potentially mineralisable nitrogen, organic content and bulk density were measured. Results demonstrate that generally, there improvements all measured CA soils, with decrease emissions increase aggregates being statistically significant.