Vegetable intercropping: An approach for doubling the small Farmers’ income under semi-arid conditions of Haryana

Land holding size is decreasing day by day due to urbanization, high population growth and industrialization across the country. Therefore, the strategies should be framed to produce more vegetables per unit area with optimumuse of water, fertilizers and land by adopting better agronomical management practices to fetch up the demand. A field experiment was conducted at Research Farm of the Department of Vegetable Science, CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar during kharif season of 2016-17 in a Randomized Block Design with three replications to find out suitable inter crop combination of palak with brinjal with maximum land utilization to attain higher yield and other economic benefits. Based on the research investigation, it was found that the growth and yield attributes of sole brinjal (60×60 cm) and sole palak (20×5 cm) exceeded over rest of the treatments due to minimum competition. Brinjal + palak single row gave highest net returns (Rs. 222652) and benefit to cost ratio (3.76) due to low cost of production, closely followed by paired row brinjal + palak (two rows). Paired row brinjal + palak (two rows) intercropping system also gave maximum gross returns (Rs. 304598), brinjal equivalent yield (507.6 q/ha) and palak equivalent yield (217.6 q/ha) followed by brinjal + palak single row. Brinjal normal or paired row intercropped with palak single row could be more remunerative for earning maximum net returns than the brinjal sole crop. In addition, intercropping could be considered as emerging tool for doubling small holder farmer’sincome and sustain national food security.