About

STT Technique With Intercropping For Enhancing Sustainable Production: A Success Story Of Farmer In District West Champaran, Bihar

R. P. Singh1, S. K. Gangwar2 and Abhik Patra3

1Senior Scientist and Head, KVK, West Champaran-II (Dr RPCAU, Pusa, Samatipur, Bihar)
2Senior Scientist and Head, KVK, West Champaran-I (Dr RPCAU, Pusa, Samatipur, Bihar)
3SMS-Crop Production, KVK, West Champaran-II

 
Download
Posted on February 15, 2021

INTRODUCTION

Agriculture plays a significant role in most of the developing countries including India. But due to the increased population and development of urban clusters along with industrial growth, the shrinkage in the availability of land for farming because of its non-agricultural uses. Among these, intercropping ensures multiple benefits like enhancement of yield, environmental security, diversification, labour distribution, maintenance of soil fertility, suppression of weeds, to combat the crop failure under the situation of climate change and helps in improving productivity and profitability through efficient utilization of natural resources, two major advantages are higher productivity and greater stability through utilization of solar energy, moisture and nutrients.  Intercropping is growing of two or more crops simultaneously on the same piece of land with a definite row pattern. The main concept of intercropping is to get increased total productivity per unit area and time, besides equitable and judicious utilization of land resources and farming inputs including labour. Many successful intercropping systems have been evaluated through out of the world, to get maximum production from the small land holdings. Mono-cropping is less economical to meet the farmers need. The intercropping produces two crops in a year, but it also influences the yield and yield components of sugarcane by competing for nutrients and other environmental factors. Intercropping one or more crops with sugarcane is an appropriate approach of getting additional farm income besides the principal sugarcane crop. As sugarcane is planted at adequate row spacing and this inter-row space practically remains vacant in early growth stage which extends nearly four months where suitable short duration winter crops may be grown as intercrop that increase total yield, higher monitory return, and greater resource utilization and fulfils the diversified needs of the farmers. Intercropping in sugarcane with various short duration crops like cabbage, potato, mungbean etc. has been proven profitable in comparison to growing sugarcane as sole crop (Alam et al., 2000, Singh et al., 2018, Ishita and Vaidya, 2020).
            Sugarcane is a clonally propagated crop with the planting of sugarcane setts traditionally. In this traditional method, the issues like requirement of high seed cane, low germination rate, difficulty in seed cane transportation, seed quality, etc. are affecting the cost of cultivation as well as sugarcane production. Doubling of farmers’ income, the flagship programme of the present government, can be achieved by increasing the productivity and reducing the cost of cultivation. Transplanting sugarcane single-bud/ bud-chip settlings can save seed cane requirement up to 80 per cent besides providing healthy plants and good field establishment. It is less expensive and labour saving in comparison with conventional sett planting. This method also reduces the initial water requirement of the crop and reduces crop duration in main field. Transplanting sugarcane settlings in wider row spacing provides more space and sunlight for a longer duration which increases cane productivity, and also facilitates intercropping and mechanization of sugarcane agriculture from transplanting to harvesting (Bakshi Ram, 2019). . ................see more

For Details Download PDF

REFERENCES