1Assistant Professor, Agronomy KVK, Gautambudh Nagar (U.P.)
Department of Agronomy College of Agriculture, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel University of Agriculture & Technology, Meerut-250110 (Uttar Pradesh)
Online published on 31 May, 2014.
The field experiment was conducted with six crop sequences during 2007–2010 in Meerut District of Uttar Pradesh. On the basis of 3 years mean, rice-wheat-maize (cobs) and rice-wheat-moong crop sequences were found more productive and economically efficient than rice-wheat, rice-wheat-sorghum (fodder), rice-wheat-urd and rice-wheat-cowpea (vegetable) crop sequences. Rice-wheat-maize crop sequence (97.4 q/ha) registered the 56.6, 23.4, 22.5 and 22.2 per cent higher rice equivalent yield than the lice-wheat, rice-wheat-sorghum, rice-wheat-mung and rice-wheat-urd crop sequences, respectively. Rice-wheat-maize cropping system also gave the highest net return (Rs. 119970/ha) and benefit cost ratio (3.16). Rice-wheat cropping system registered the lowest net return (Rs. 66, 850/ha) and benefit: cost ratio of 2.48 followed by rice-wheat-urdbean (Rs. 95, 470 and 2.74). At the end of 3 cropping cycles, rice-wheat-moongbean and rice-wheat-cowpea cropping systems showed significantly higher values of soil organic carbon, available nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium, whereas a slight reduction was noticed in rice-wheat crop sequence as compaired to their initial values.
