Climate resilient alternate land use systems for sustainable development in rainfed agro-ecology of Odisha

Rainfed agriculture is being adversely affected by the major problems like land degradation, climatic change, degeneration of bio-diversity due to open grazing and poverty driven over utilization of natural resources. All these problems together lead to increasing challenges for sustainability of rainfed crop production. These problems can be mitigated if the farming community can be mobilized and motivated to adopt improved rainfed technologies. In order to meet the challenges and the vagaries of monsoon, the alternate land use system (ALU) is a suitable technology to minimize such risk and to achieve stability in the dryland areas. In view of the above facts, the on-farm demonstrations were undertaken in two village clusters such as Budhadani and Dadaki of the Kandhamal District of Odisha under All India Coordinated Research Project for Dryland Agriculture (AICRPDA), Odisha University of Agriculture and Technology (OUAT), Phulbani during 2015–16 to 2018–19. Different agri-horti alternate land use systems such as (i) mango + greengram (ii) mango + blackgram (iii) mango + groundnut (iv) mango + turmeric (v) jackfruit + turmeric (vi) papaya + greengram (viii) papaya + cowpea (ix) papaya + groundnut (x) papaya + blackgram (xi) sole mango (xii) sole jackfruit (xiii) sole papaya were taken in both the village clusters out of which, turmeric based systems were fitted in old orchards and all other systems were taken up in newly established orchards. It was found from the investigation that the integration of cropping with fruit components registered higher gross income than the fruit crops alone. The turmeric crop as intercrop recorded higher net income than the other crops. Turmeric, greengram, blackgram and groundnut as intercrops can profitably be grown in rainfed uplands under red lateritic soils of Odisha because of their ability to improve soil fertility and fulfil the nutritional requirement of the farming families.