Growth and Yield of Intercrop Kharif Pulses and Performance of Fingermillet + Kharif Pulses Intercropping System as Influenced by Different Row Ratios

The increasing pressure on land resources, climate variability and need for sustainable intensification, cultivating pulses with fingermillet appears as a practical and ecologically sound strategy in rainfed agriculture. Legume inclusion provides sustainability to non-legume cereal components by enriching soil fertility, increasing system productivity and economic returns. Fingermillet + pulses intercropping system helps to conserve moisture, improve soil physical properties and buildup soil fertility.

A field experiment was conducted in randomized block design on the Experimental Farm of the College of Post Graduate Studies in Agricultural Science, CAU(I), Kyrdemkulai, Meghalaya during kharif season of 2023 and 2024 to assess the performance of fingermillet + kharif pulses intercropping system as well as growth and yield behaviour of intercrop kharif pulses viz., greengram and blackgram as intercrops with different row ratios.

Among the fingermillet + greengram intercropping treatments, the highest value of growth parameters, yield attributes and yield of greengram were found with fingermillet + greengram at 3:3 row ratio followed by 2:2. Similarly, under differnent fingermillet + blackgram intercropping treatments, 3:3 row ratio recorded highest values of growth parameters, yield attributes and yield of blackgram. However, fingermillet + greengram at 4:2 row ratio registered significantly more FMEY (3.2 t ha^-1) and LER (1.34) as compared to sole fingermillet among the different fingermillet pulses intercropping system. Furthermore, fingermillet + kharif pulses intercropped treatments were able to maintain higher levels of available soil N after completion of the two years experiment.