Effect of Date of Sowing on Growth, Yield and Economics of Early Cauliflower-marigold Intercropping System

Production of cauliflowers early in the season is always a challenging task for the farmers of plains due to prevalence of extreme temperature and/or heavy rainfall. Hence, early cauliflowers are predominantly cultivated in hilly tracts of India. Here, in this experiment, an attempt had been made to find out the optimum sowing time of early cauliflowers based on the growth and yield performances under cauliflower-marigold intercropping system in terai belt of West Bengal as offseason farming.

Four early cauliflower F₁ hybrids (BN 50, Monsoon Queen, White Pearl and White Treasure) were sown starting from third week of April to first week of June at weekly interval and transplanted in a low-cost poly house using marigold (Pusa Narangi) as an intercrop with three replications. The entire experiment was laid out in factorial randomized block design (FRBD) with seven dates of sowing and four early cauliflower varieties. The experiment was conducted during 2022 and 2023 growing season. The results were summarized based on the pooled analysis of both the years.

The pooled analysis have indicated that the cauliflower seeds sown during second week of May resulted maximum plant height, plant spread, number of leaves per plant, curd diameter, stalk length, gross plant weight, net curd weight, curd yield per plot and curd yield per hectare. However, the minimum days required to initiate the curd formation and the same for curd maturity were found in first week of May sown cauliflower plants. The overall performance of cauliflower varieties was found in following order Monsoon Queen > White Pearl >White Treasure > BN 50. The marigold plant transplanted during first week of June resulted best performance regarding growth, flowering and yield of flowers. The benefit: cost ratio of second week of May sown cauliflowers- marigold intercropping varied between 2.72 to 2.90.