Background: Blackgram is a major pulse crop grown next to horsegram and greengram in Chamarajanagar district. Unavailability of high yielding and yellow mosaic resistant varieties, poor agronomic and pest management practices has led to drastic fall down in productivity and profitability of blackgram in Chamarajanagara district. Methods: Large scale demonstration was conducted in an area of 60 ha covering 150 farmers of K. Mukahalli, Kotamballi, Devalapura, Doddatuppuru and Y.K. mole villages. Further the integrated crop management practices in blackgram variety LBG-791 was demonstrated during Pre-kharif of 2020-21, 2021-22 and 2022-23 by ICAR-Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Chamarajanagara, Karnataka. Result: The Yellow mosaic disease incidence was significantly less in LBG-791 (1.40%) when compared to T-9 (Farmers’ variety) (66.8%). Adoption of LBG-791 along with improved crop management practices resulted in 121.5% higher mean grain yield as compared to farmers practice. Higher Benefit: Cost ratio of 1.94 was recorded with integrated crop management practices as compared to farmers’ practices (1.03). The study exhibited mean extension and technology gap of 379 kg/ha and 119 kg/ha respectively. Further the mean technology index was 14.73 per cent. These results indicate that there is a great opportunity for farmers of Karnataka (Zone-6) for increasing productivity and profitability of the blackgram crop by adoption of Integrated Crop Management Practices (ICMP).

Background: The major constraint in rainfed chickpea cultivation is unavailability of short duration, wilt resistant and high yielding varieties in Chamarajanagara district. In this regard, an investigation was carried out to identify suitable high yielding varieties for Chamarajanagara District, Karnataka (Zone-6). Methods: As a part of on farm testing of ICAR-KVK, Chamarajanagara conducted a field experiment during rabi 2018-19, 2019-20 and 2020-21 (Three years) in farmers field at Kotamballi village. Four chickpea varieties viz., Annigere-1, JG-11, Jaki-9218 and BGD-103 were tested under randomized complete block design (RCBD) which was replicated seven times. Result: The study revealed that chickpea variety BGD-103 recorded significantly higher grain yield (14.28 q/ha) and per cent protein content (20.10%) with the minimum disease incidence of 7.93 per cent. The growth and yield parameters were also better with BGD-103 variety as compared to other varieties. The highest wilt incidence of 29.2 per cent was recorded with chickpea variety A-1 followed by JG-11 (26.09%). The highest net return of ₹.35703/ha and benefit cost ratio of 2.16 was recorded in BGD-103 compared to other varieties. The investigation revealed that BGD-103 was found to be suitable variety for rainfed black soils of Karnataka (Zone-6) due to minimum wilt incidence, short duration nature, higher seed yield and per day productivity.