Conservation agriculture has recently been a hot topic of agricultural research and has generated significant global interest. Conservation agriculture has three core principles: minimal soil disturbance, permanent soil cover, and crop rotations. The research on this topic has also witnessed a boom in recent years as the number of peer-reviewed literature on conservation agriculture is rising exponentially. This study critically examines all the peer-reviewed documents published on conservation agriculture from the 1990s to 2021 and indexed in the web of science core database. The search returned 3023 documents, which were then processed in the R-based bibliometric package for annual scientific production trend, source, author, document, citation, keyword analysis, and co-occurrence networking using VOSviewer. Our findings show remarkable growth in conservation agriculture research in recent times, although it witnessed a shortfall in 2021. Notably, 15 core source journals contribute the most to the field, while 8692 researchers have authored or co-authored at least a document on conservation agriculture. While the USA, India, and Australia are front runners in conservation agriculture research, the spread of the topic is worldwide.

A field experiment was conducted to ascertain the effect of organic and inorganic nutrient sources on yield and quality of fodder cowpea [Vigna unguiculata (L.) Walp.] during kharif, 2017 at Research Farm of Agronomy Section, ICAR-National Dairy Research Institute, Karnal. The experiment was laid out in Randomized Block Design with twelve nutrient combinations and replicated thrice. Nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium was applied in the form of urea, SSP and MOP, respectively and four different biofertilizers were used viz. rhizobium, phosphate solubilizing bacteria (PSB), potassium solubilizing bacteria (KSB) and zinc solubilizing bacteria (ZnSB). Application of RDF (N, P, K) along with biofertilizers (Rhizobium, Phosphorus Solubilizer Bacteria, Potassium Solubilizer Bacteria and Zinc Solubilizer Bacteria) Treatment [T₆] gave significantly (P<0.05) higher green fodder yield (334.5 q ha⁻¹), Dry matter content (17.80%) and dry matter yield (59.5 q ha⁻¹). Application of 2/3^rd RDF along with biofertilizers (Rhizobium, PSB, KSB and ZnSB), [T₇] significantly (P=0.05) enhanced the quality parameters of fodder cowpea like crude protein (18.30%), ether extract (3.48%) and total ash content (8.82%) while insoluble crude protein (NDICP and ADICP), organic matter and fiber fractions (NDF, ADF, ADL) were significantly (P<0.05) lowered. However, lignin content was comparable among the treatments. Therefore, it is concluded that reduction of one third RDF along with additional biofertilizers gave more improved quality fodder than rest of the treatments.