Diversification Of Rice-Wheat Cropping System To Sustain The Productivity And Profitability

The field experiments were conducted during 2017-19 at the ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, India. The main aim of the study was to find out a suitable cropping system that can replace the existing rice-wheat cropping system to realize higher productivity and profitability. Four cropping systems, viz. rice (Oryza sativa L.) - mustard (Brassica juncea L.) - mungbean (Vigna radiata L.), maize (Zea mays L.) - mustard-mungbean, maize - potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) - onion (Allium cepa L.) and fodder maize+ cowpea (Vigna unguiculata L.) - wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) -mungbean, were evaluated in a randomized complete block design with four replications. Results suggested that the highest system productivity was obtained from the maize-potato-onion cropping system, recording almost 150% higher system productivity over the maize-mustard-mungbean and rice-mustard-mungbean cropping systems. The next best cropping system was fodder maizc + cowpea - wheat-mungbean, recording significantly higher system productivity than maize-mustard-mungbean and rice-mustard-mungbean cropping systems. The highest gross and net returns was also recorded from the maize-potato-onion cropping system, being significantly higher than all other cropping systems in the first year, and statistically at par with the fodder maize + cowpea - wheat-mungbean cropping system in the second year. Overall, the highest productivity and net returns was recorded from the maize-potato-onion cropping system, and can potentially be an option to replace the existing rice-wheat cropping system of the Indo-Gangetic Plains.