Enfluence of intercropping vegetables with winter harvested plant cane for enhanced productivity of subsequent ratoon in sub-tropical India

Abstract

In the recent past, the land use patterns have been changed substantially by the peasantry owing to demand of market driven remunerative crops, returns per rupee invested in area and time and technical feasibility in adoption. Consumption of vegetables is increasing at a faster rate, being protective food for human nutrition. Their cultivation is of utmost importance to the growers of north India because it offers tremendous potential of higher income per unit area and time. Cultivation of vegetables either alone or intercropped with an initially slow growing widely spaced crop like sugarcane fetch high return of combined economic yield and is fast becoming the obvious choice of resource rich farmers. Among different cropping systems, intercropping of potato with autumn sugarcane in northern India has shown tremendous potentiality in enhancing the overall productivity of the system.