Vegetable intercropping: An approach for doubling the small Farmers’ income under semi-arid conditions of Haryana

Abstract

Land holding size is decreasing day by day due to
urbanization, high population growth and industrialization
across the country. Therefore, the strategies should be
framed to produce more vegetables per unit area with
optimum use of water, fertilizers and land by adopting better
agronomical management practices to fetch up the demand.
A field experiment was conducted at Research Farm of the
Department of Vegetable Science, CCS Haryana Agricultural
University, Hisar during kharif season of 2016-17 in a
Randomized Block Design with three replications to find
out suitable intercrop combination of palak with brinjal with
maximum land utilization to attain higher yield and other
economic benefits. Based on the research investigation, it
was found that the growth and yield attributes of sole brinjal
(60x60 cm) and sole palak (20x5 cm) exceeded over rest of
the treatments due to minimum competition. Brinjal + palak
single row gave highest net returns (Rs. 222652) and benefit
to cost ratio (3.76) due to low cost of production, closely
followed by paired row brinjal + palak (two rows). Paired
row brinjal + palak (two rows) intercropping system also
gave maximum gross returns (Rs. 304598), brinjal equivalent
yield (507.6 q/ha) and palak equivalent yield (217.6 q/ha)
followed by brinjal + palak single row. Brinjal normal or
paired row intercropped with palak single row could be
more remunerative for earning maximum net returns than
the brinjal sole crop. In addition, intercropping could be
considered as emerging tool for doubling small holder
farmer’s income and sustain national food security.