**5. Conclusions**

The crop establishment methods (CEMs) differ significantly in energy input and output along with protein and micronutrient uptake in both years of study. The gross and net energy production was highest in ARS–ZTW which was 293.9 <sup>×</sup> 103 MJ ha−<sup>1</sup> and 273.5–267.6 <sup>×</sup> 103 MJ ha−1, respectively. The protein yield increase in ARS–ZTW was 61.5–62 kg ha−<sup>1</sup> in the first year and 86.2–88.3 kg ha−<sup>1</sup> in the second year over other CEMs, respectively" while it reduced the energy required for the production of one tonne of system yield by 206 and 250 MJ tonne−<sup>1</sup> over PTR–CDW in the first and second year, while the same for SRI–SWI was 467 and 517 MJ tonne−1, respectively, for the first and second year. The application of 75% RDN with microbial consortia and Zn showed promise

in enhancing net and gross energy production over all other combinations. This signifies their role of microbial consortia in energy efficiency and nutrient security of RWCS. The future research may focus on evaluation and standardization of microbial consortia in other crops and cropping systems under diverse ecologies. Furthermore, understanding the physiological and biochemical processes or mechanisms which are affected by the microbial consortia in rice and wheat can be an innovative line of research work. Besides this, the energy inputs and output and energy efficiency need to be studied for the increased level of mechanization in crop production as the lack of labour availability and higher wage rate in the future will increase mechanization in crop production.

**Supplementary Materials:** The following supporting information can be downloaded at: https: //www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/su14105986/s1. Table S1: Mean weekly meteorological data during the rice-growing season in 2013 and 2014; Table S2: Mean weekly meteorological data during the wheat growing season in 2013–14 and 2014–15.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, Y.S.S. and A.A.S.; methodology, A.A.S., Y.S.S. and R.P.; software, R.S.B. and A.A.S.; validation, A.A.S., Y.S.S. and D.K.; formal analysis, Y.S.S., A.A.S. and R.S.B.; investigation, Y.S.S. and A.A.S.; resources, Y.S.S., D.K., R.P. and A.A.S.; data curation, R.S.B.; writing—original draft preparation, A.A.S.; writing—review and editing, Y.S.S., R.P. and R.S.B.; visualization, A.A.S. and Y.S.S.; supervision, Y.S.S.; project administration, Y.S.S.; funding acquisition, Y.S.S. and A.A.S. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** The research was part of PhD research work conducted at Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR)-Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), New Delhi (India). This research received no external funding, except the financial support as Senior Research Fellowship (SRF) from ICAR for living expenses and facilities from ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Data Availability Statement:** Not applicable.

**Acknowledgments:** The authors duly acknowledge ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi (India) for providing financial support as Senior Research Fellowship. Our sincere thanks are also to Head and Professor, Division of Agronomy, ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, India for providing facilities required for the field experiment.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no competing interest.
