Climate-Resilient Agroecosystem Management Enhances Sustainable Crop Production: A Multi-Site Field Evaluation of Integrated Strategies

Abstract

We field tested the feasibility of integrated actions for managing agroecosystems sustainably to adapt agriculture to climate variability and change in multi-location and multi-variable agricultural research fields of 300 experimental plots and 20 research farms. This was a randomised complete block design experiment with three replications conducted with ten interventions, namely conservation agriculture, crop diversification, agroforestry, mulching, drip irrigation, integrated nutrient management, integrated pest management, climate-resilient varieties, rainwater harvesting and precision fertiliser application. Through two consecutive cropping seasons, the data were collected and analysed based on analysis of variance, multiple linear regression and PCA. We found that adoption of climate-resilient practices reduced nutrient-use efficiency by 20.9%, improved water-use efficiency by 22.1%, improved soil organic carbon by 24.8%, reduced pest incidence by 18.7% and increased the grain yield by 29.4% when compared with conventional practices. Overall, the multiple linear regression model explained 76.3% of the variance in sustainable crop production, with the soil organic carbon (SOC) (β = 0.45, p < 0.001), water-use efficiency (WUE) (β = 0.39, p < 0.001), integrated nutrient management (INM) (β = 0.34, p < 0.001), and types of climate-resilient varieties (CRV) (β = 0.29, p = 0.002) emerging as the most important predictors of performance. Moreover, principal component analysis showed that the three main components of soil fertility and water management, as well as crop productivity, accounted for 82.4% of the total variance. There was a significant positive relation of the climate resilience index with crop productivity (r = 0.84, P < 0.001).