Aonla based alternate land use system for climate resilience and sustainable income in rainfed vertisols of Tamil Nadu

Aonla (Indian goose berry - Emblica officinalis Gaertn.) based agri-horti alternative land use system trial was conducted during 2017 to 2020 at AICRPDA Centre, Kovilpatti to identify the suitable field crops cultivated in this domain for intercropping with aonla based agri-horti system. The aonla grafts of NA7 variety were planted at a spacing 5 m × 5 m during rainy season with a plant population of 400 saplings/ha. The field crops of pearl millet (variety COCu9), sorghum (variety K12), and greengram (variety CO7) were used as intercrops with four treatments of aonla alone (T₁), aonla + pearl millet (T₂), aonla + sorghum (T₃) and aonla + greengram (T₄) in a randomized block design. The intercrops were raised only during the rainy season (October to December) in inter-row spaces of aonla fruit trees at a spacing of 45 cm × 15 cm for sorghum and pearl millet and 30 cm × 10 cm for greengram. The results revealed that greengram intercropped with aonla resulted in higher sorghum equivalent yield of 3088 kg/ha with a per day productivity of 8.46 kg/ha/day and rain water use efficiency of 4.92 kg/ha/mm. The net return and B:C ratio were Rs.37741/ha and 2.57, respectively which was identified as a best agri-horti alternative land use system that provides sustainable income from dryland Vertisols of Tamil Nadu.