Assessment of competitive indices in intercropping system of brinjal and palak

Abstract

An assessment of the competitive indices in intercropping between brinjal and palak was carried out with the aim of increasing the productivity of these crops as well as to achieve the optimum utilization of all the available resources. For this purpose, an experiment consisting of 11 treatments with three replications in a Randomized Block Design (RBD) was conducted at Research Farm of the Department of Vegetable Science, CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar during autumn-winter season of 2016-17. Intercropping systems were assessed by land equivalent ratio (LER), areatime equivalent ratio (ATER), relative crowding coefficient (K), aggressivity (A), competition ratio (CR), actual yield loss (AYL) and intercropping advantage (IA). Competition indices like CEY, LER, ATER and K were found to be superior for the paired row brinjal + palak (two rows). Although, the treatment brinjal + palak (three rows) was found better in terms of indices like A, CR, AYL and IA. This might be due to the interspecific and intraspecific competition between brinjal and palak for space, nutrients, light and availabl resources. LER, ATER and K values were greater than 1 for all the intercropping treatments. These findings showed a advantage of intercropping for exploiting the resources of the environment optimally.