Integrated Crop Management Strategy for Improved Chickpea Production and its Impact on the Livelihood of Farmers in Nepal

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is traditionally an integral component of the rainfed rice-based cropping system of the Terai region of Nepal. However, in the last 20 years frequent crop failures due to out breaks of wilt (Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. ciceris), botrytis gray mold (Botrytis cinerea) and pod borer (Helicoverpa armigera) have made its cultivation unreliable and uneconomical. Surveys have shown that there is a substantial area of rainfed rice-fallow that could grow chickpea and generate additional income if farmers had access to a reliable production system for chickpea. To meet this need an integrated crop management (ICM) technology package was developed for Nepal. This comprised an improved cultivar Avarodhi (ICC 14344), rhizobial and fungicidal treatment of seeds prior to sowing; fertilizer application and need-based foliar applications of fungicides and insecticides to control BGM and pod borer, respectively. This technology package was evaluated and up-scaled through farmers’ participatory on-farm research. Over 3000 farmers in 17 villages from 10 districts in the Terai (lowlands) of Nepal participated in conducting ICM validation trials. Severities of wilt, BGM and pod borer were significantly reduced and grain yields more than doubled in ICM plots compared with non-ICM plots in all the five years of study generating a substantial increase in income.