Management of Drought through Crops and Varietal Diversification Under Dryland Areas of Western India

The productivity of rainfed soil of maize ecosystem of western India is very low (< t ha⁻¹) and unstable due to erratic monsoon and long dry spells, poor soils and several biological constraints (weeds, pest and disease). Keeping the urgent need for drought management in western India (85 Mha), crop and varietal diversification technology was generated through on-farm research trials in representative soils of western India after analyzing agroclimate (rainfall variability, probability of onset of effective monsoon and length of rainy season) and edaphic (soil water retention properties) constraints and prospects. Based on rainfall analysis, direct seeded, low water requiring crops namely, maize, sorghum, groundnut, sesame, clusterbean, blackgram, greengram and horsegram with their varieties were sown in medium textured soil during 2001–2004 with deep summer ploughing and cultivator during the pre-monsoon shower (May – June). Study revealed that in deficient rainfall years or drought years (2002 and 2003), when crop yield was affected adversely in medium textured soils, higher maize equivalent yield and water use efficiency were obtained from green gram variety K-851 (3934 kg ha⁻¹ and 5.80 kg ha⁻¹mm⁻¹) followed by sesame variety RT-46 (3488 kg ha⁻¹ and 5.27 kg ha⁻¹mm⁻¹) and groundnut variety TAG-24 (2935 kg ha⁻¹ and 7.58 kg ha⁻¹mm⁻¹), respectively.

Study also revealed that productivity of crops in the same soil did not fluctuate much between erratic rainfall (2001 and 2004) and rainfall deficit year (2003). The highest sustainable yield index (SYI) was recorded for greengram variety K- 851 (0.43), followed by sesame variety RT-46 (0.37) and groundnut variety TAG-24 (0.35) crops. Thus, crop varietal diversification technology was found to be very effective for drought management.