Livelihood Security Through Pigeonpea Based Intercropping Systems Under Rainfed Condition

Abstract

A field experiment was conducted during two consecutive years of kharif 2015-16 and 2016-17 at Soil Conservation and Water Management Farm of the C.S. Azad university of Agriculture and technology, Kanpur to find out the effect of cropping systems and moisture conservation practices on growth, yield, moisture use efficiency, splash loss and economics under rainfed condition. The soil of the experimental field was sandy loam in texture with pH 7.7, 0.32 % organic carbon, 171.4 kg ha-1 available-N, 17.7 kg ha-1 available P2O5 and 181.6 kg ha-1 available K2O. The field capacity, wilting point and bulk density were 18.7 %, 6.2 % and 1.37 Mg m-3, respectively. The treatments comprise of 6 cropping systems i.e. (C1) Sole pigeonpea at 60 cm regular sowing. (C2) Sole pigeonpea paired 40/80 (C3) Sole sorghum at 45 cm by regular sowing (C4 ) Sole urdbean at 45 cm by regular sowing (C5) Pigeonpea + sorghum-paired sowing 40/ 80 (C6) Pigeonpea + urdbean paired sowing 40/80 and 3 moisture conservation practices i.e. (M1) Control (M2) Ridging and furrowing in between the crop rows after three weeks of planting (M3) Weeding and hoeing once at 30-35 DAS tested in Split plot design with 3 replications. Results shows that the growth and yield of individual crop decreased in intercropping where decreased was more in sorghum than urdbean. The yields of pigeonpea, sorghum and urdbean were highest in their sole stands. The yield of sole and intercropped sorghum and urdbean in terms of pigeonpea equivalent seed yield showed significant variation, whereas, pigeonpea + urdbean paired sowing (40/80 cm apart) 23.23 q ha-1 brought out significantly the highest production as compared to sole urdbean (9.26 q ha-1) cropping system, moreover the land equivalent ratio, moisture use efficiency, gross return, net return and cost : benefit ratio were highest in pigeonpea + urdbean paired Rs 87733 and lowest under sole urdbean Rs 20026. Simultaneously, maximum splash loss of (5.52 t ha-1) was observed under the sole pigeonpea paired sowing