Assessing the influence of different farming practices on yield, quality and economics of different soybean varieties

Abstract

A field experiment was conducted during rabi 2024-25 in College of Agriculture, Navile, Shivamogga. The investigation was laid out using split plot design where main plot consists of three farming practices viz., conventional farming, organic farming and natural farming and sub plots consists of soybean varieties viz., MAUS-2, KB-79, KHSb-2 and JS 335 resulting twelve treatment combinations that are replicated thrice. The results revealed that conventional farming recorded significantly superior performance in number of pods per plant (36.66), pod weight per plant (11.85 g), seed yield (18.7 q ha-1) and haulm yield (27.3 q ha-1) over organic farming and natural farming. Among the varieties tested, MAUS-2 recorded significantly higher yield and yield attributes as compared to KB-79, KHSb-2 and JS 335 varieties. With respect to quality parameters, conventional farming recorded significantly higher protein content (34.47%) and oil content (18.97%) whereas, organic and natural farming were statistically on par with each other however, quality parameters remained non-significant with different soybean varieties. On the other hand, significantly higher gross returns were indicated in conventional farming (₹ 95,924 ha-1) as compared to other farming practices, but in terms of net returns and B:C ratio natural farming (₹ 61,455 ha-1 and 3.98, respectively) recorded significantly higher values than conventional farming and organic farming. Among the varieties, MAUS-2 recorded significantly higher gross returns, net returns and B:C ratio as compared to other varieties.