Effect of irrigation regimes on the growth, yield and water use efficiency under groundnut based intercropping system: A review

Abstract

Irrigation management nowadays need to be properly monitored to cope with depleting fresh water resources and enhance agricultural productivity. Groundnut a major oilseed crops of India accounts to 25% of total oilseed production in the country. India’s vegetable oil requirement by 2022 is estimated 33.2 million tonnes and currently imports about 70% of the requirement accounting about 73,000 crores per annum. Further, industrialization and urbanization has led to decreased land availability and are preferring to cultivate cash crops like cotton, maize, etc. This along with pulses shortage has led to malnutrition in young children which needs to be addressed shortly. This review outlines on performance of groundnut under different irrigation frequencies and evaluates intercrops like castor, blackgram, sesame and pearlmillet and their performances with groundnut. From the review collected it could be studied that groundnut responds to different irrigation frequencies and also performs well under intercropping system but with certain short duration crops. Irrigation can be supplied more frequent at 10-15 days interval during summer and 15-20 days interval during winter and more compatible with blackgram followed by sesame, castor and pearlmillet. This could be primarily due to the lesser shading effect caused by the companion short duration crop and also atmospheric nitrogen fixation in case of legumes while negative effect when intercropped with exhaustive crops. Therefore, proper irrigation scheduling needs to be quantified along with best suited intercrop to enhance the productivity and profitability from the system.