Current Advances in Agricultural Sciences(An International Journal)

The study was carried out in seven villages of Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh which has the highest average sorghum productivity (6.5 t ha⁻¹) during 2010–11 in the country and the crop is exclusively cultivated in rice-fallows under zero-tillage condition. It was aimed at identifying different factors influencing the sorghum cultivation in rice-fallows and their relationship with gross profits. The data collected from 100 randomly selected respondents from different categories revealed that independent variables namely land holding, area under sorghum crop, fertilizers cost, total cost of inputs, labour cost, cost of irrigation and grain yield had significant correlation with gross returns obtained from the sorghum cultivation. However, the correlations between age, animals, family size, working members in their family and seed cost were found to be negative and non-significant. The statistical tests using multiple regression analysis revealed that among the variables studied, only area under sorghum crop, fertilizers cost, labour cost and grain yield had significant positive contribution whereas, irrigation cost and pesticide cost were found negatively significant towards gross returns obtained from the sorghum cultivation in rice-fallows conditions (P=0.01). It needs attention to standardize location-specific production technologies in participatory mode and to educate the farmers regarding improved cultivation practices of sorghum in rice-fallows for maximizing its profit margin.