Economic advantages of pigeonpea under intercropping and differential cropping geometry

Field experiments were conducted at Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore to study the effect of inter and intra row spacing on the performance of pigeon pea under irrigated and intercropped situation. The treatments comprised of planting geometry (row spacing of 90, 120, 150 and 180 cm at varied level of plant to plant spacing with 30, 45, and 60 cm) and different row proportions of pigeonpea + greengram (1:2, 1:3, 1:4 and 1:5) were studied in randomized block design with three replications. The results of the study revealed that the gross return (Rs 61,951/ha), net return (Rs 37, 457/ha) and BCR (2.53) monetary advantage index (20607) and income equivalent ratio (1.29) of pigeonpea increased significantly with wider spacing of 120 x 30 cm with 1:3 row proportion.