Enhancing Crop Productivity and Profitability of Autumn Sugarcane with Intercrop** of Winter Vegetables in Real Farming Situations of North-Central India

Abstract

Increasing area under food crops is not possible due to limited availability of agricultural land, the world human population stress is growing exponentially and there is need to fulfill its food requirements. Crop diversification with intercrops can go in a long way to solve the problems of low productivity per unit area and enhance the crop productivity of a production system. Intercrop** of short-duration winter vegetables with autumn-planted sugarcane concerning for system yield enhancement and economic return, particularly in north-central India, aims to match efficiently crop demands to the available growth resources and labor. The on-farm field experiment was conducted to enhance the crop productivity and profitability of intercrop** winter vegetables with autumn sugarcane and also to increase the income of farmers during autumn season of 2010–2011, 2011–2012, and 2012–2013 at Dhanuansand village under Mohanlalganj block of Lucknow district in Uttar Pradesh. The experiment with eight treatment was laid out in Randomized Block Design with four replications. Autumn sugarcane was planted by flat method at 90 cm row spacing with three budded setts at the rate of 30 cm in a row length. Intercrops of two and three rows were planted in sugarcane and compared with their sole crops. Intercrop** of potato with autumn-planted sugarcane recorded highest cane equivalent yield (179.44 t/ha) and maximum net return (Rs. 321,282/ha) as compared to other intercrop** system including sole sugarcane (94.5 t/ha and Rs. 133,395/ha, respectively). Intercrop** system was better than sugarcane sole crop. The improvement in sugarcane + potato intercrop in cane yield was 8.3% against sole sugarcane, while sugarcane + cauliflower, sugarcane + cabbage, sugarcane + knol-khol, and sugarcane + turnip were statistically at par among themselves and with the cane yield under sole sugarcane. The reduction in sugarcane yield due to intercrops cauliflower, cabbage, knol-khol and turnip were to the tune of 4.0%, 3.5%, 4.2%, and 4.8%, respectively, than sole sugarcane. Similarly, the winter vegetable such as carrot and radish intercrops with autumn sugarcane decreased the mean cane yield by 9.9 and 11.5% as compared to other vegetables intercrop** system. Sugarcane + potato intercrop** system was found to be the most remunerative and thus gave the highest B:C ratio of 1.97 followed by 1.65, 1.62, 1.58, 1.41, 1.30, and 1.12 under sugarcane + cabbage, sugarcane + knol khol, sugarcane + cauliflower, sugarcane + turnip, sugarcane + carrot, and sugarcane + radish intercrop** system, respectively. The sole sugarcane B:C ratio was 1.10 only and significantly lesser than all intercrop** systems. The cane commercial sugarcane juice per cent were non-significant with the various intercrop** systems.