Performance of green gram - sesame mixed croppingin the red and lateritic zone of West Bengal

Abstract

A field experiment was carried out in the red and lateritic soil of Regional Research Station, Jhargram, Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya,West Bengal during the prekharif season of 2015 to evaluate the technological feasibility of mixed cropping of green gram with sesame under different seeding ratio. The experiment was conducted in a randomized block design with four replications. The treatments comprises for the experiment were T 1-sole green gram, T 2 -sole sesame, T 3-green gram: sesame -90:10, T 4-green gram : sesame-75 : 25, T 5-green gram : sesame-60 : 40 , T 6 -green gram : sesame-50 : 50. Yield parameters like number branch/plant, number of pod/ plant, number of capsule/plant, pod length, number of grain per pod/capsule, grain weight etc. were studied. The highest grain yield for both crop was obtained from the sole cropping of green gram and sole sesame. The maximum land equivalent ratio(LER) of 1.18 was observed at green gram : sesame seeding ratio of 60 : 40.The highest green gram equivalent yield( 9.49 q/ha) was obtained from green gram : sesame seeding ratio of 60 : 40 . It was noticed that in all the mixed cropping systems, there was higher LER which indicates higher yield advantage over the sole crop.

Augmenting productivity and profitability through Sesame–Legume intercropping

“…This higher yield in the sole crop for both mungbean and soybean is obviously because minimum intra-species competition and no interspecies competition at all. This finding corroborates with the findings of Moinuddin [ 31 ] who reported sole mungbean yielded higher (593.33 kg ha −1 ) than mungbean intercropped with different rates of sesame.…”

“…Whereas, there were no statistically significant differences among the treatments in plant height and thousand seed weight. Moinuddin [ 31 ] also found that highest number of branches per plant (3.6), pods per plant (40) and grain yield (936 kg ha −1 ) in the sole cropped sesame was observed vis-à-vis sesame intercropped with different rates of mungbean and which is similar to the finding of this study.…”

“…The important thing here is sesame intercropped with half seed rate of mungbean showed lower CR (1.57) indicating with lower competition than sesame intercropped with full seed rate of mungbean and soybean at both rates ( Table 5 ). However, Moinuddin [ 31 ] reported that mungbean was more competitive than sesame when planted at the same proportion. On the other hand, the half seed rate of mungbean intercropped with sesame was relatively with higher CR (0.67) and relatively competitive among the other legumes intercropped with sesame.…”

“…It is obvious that there are different indexes to estimate the advantages of mixed cropping in different aspects. However, different scholars have been using different indexes and among whom; Bhatti et al [ 33 ] used only economic benefit analysis; Sarma et al [ 42 ] used two indexes; Khan et al [ 34 ] used three indexes; Bantie et al and Moinuddin [ 31 , 43 ] used four indexes; Sadeghpour et al [ 44 ] used five indexes; Jan et al [ 41 ] used six indexes; Aasim et al [ 38 ] used eight indexes; Khonde et al [ 40 ] used nine different indexes. However, there are no clear justifications why they use some indexes and why not the others.…”