Residual impacts of insitu green manuring and irrigation scheduling on growth, yield and economics of chickpea under varied land modules in sunflower-chickpea cropping system

Abstract

A field experiment was conducted during 2016-17 and 2017-18 to study the residual impact of different rainfed and irrigated ecosystems (0.8 IW/CPE and 0.6 IW/CPE) and different land modules (i.e., T1 and T2 Compartment bunding without and with sunhemp, T3 and T4 Broad bed furrows without and with sunhemp and T5 and T6 Furrows without and with sunhemp) on cowpea in sunflower-chickpea cropping system. The two year pooled data reveals that among irrigated ecosystems, 0.8 IW/CPE ratio recorded significantly higher growth parameters viz., plant height 43.63 cm, number of branches 8.10 and number of pods per plant 54.53 resulting in higher chickpea grain yields (15.16 q ha-1) as compared to rainfed ecosystem (9.35 q ha-1), respectively. Among the land modules, broad bed furrows with in-situ sunhemp green manuring recorded higher grain and stover yield (15.16 and 24.02 q ha-1, respectively). Significantly higher water use efficiency was also recorded with broad bed furrows with sunhemp in chickpea (2.53 kg ha.mm-1). The net returns and B:C ratio were significantly influenced due to irrigation and land modules. Irrigation @ 0.8 IW/CPE ratio recorded significantly higher net returns of Rs. 40,633 ha-1 and among the different insitu moisture conservation systems, significantly higher net returns (Rs.38653 ha-1) and B:C ratio (2.92) were observed in broad bed furrows with sunhemp (T4) as compared to rest of the treatments.