Inclusion Effect of Fox Tail Millet in Fallow-chickpea Production System: An Approach to Improve Land Productivity in Vertisols under Variable Water Regimes

The land utilization efficiency of vertisols can be increased by inclusion of a short duration crop preceding Bengal gram in fallow-bengalgram cropping system in scarce rainfall zone of Andhra Pradesh.

A field investigation was conducted at Regional Agricultural Research Station, Nandyal, Kurnool (District), Andhra Pradesh during 2010–11, 2011–12 and 2012–13 to study the influence of including a short duration crop like foxtail millet in traditional fallowchickpea system. The field was laid out in Split plot design and the treatments are comprised of cropping systems i.e foxtail milletchickpea and fallow-chickpea as main plots and variable water regimes (with and without irrigation) as subplots.

The results revealed that in deep vertisols, kharif fallows can be grown with a short duration crop like foxtail millet by utilising the initial rains of the season thus providing an additional income to chickpea farmer and was also observed that seed yield of chickpea taken up during rabi was not affected due to preceding foxtail millet.