Doubling the farm income through the promoting of pigeonpea based intercropping system: A review

Abstract

In order to ensure self-sufficiency, the current pulses requirement in the country is estimated at 22.5 MT. Keeping in view the trends in population growth rate and that several other options besides pulses are now available for meeting protein requirements of the people due to change in food habits of masses, the pulse requirement in the country is projected at 32 MT by the year 2030 and 39 million tonnes by the year 2050. This necessitates an annual growth rate of 2.2% requiring a phenomenal shift in research, technology generation, its dissemination, and commercialization along with capacity building in frontier areas of research. In every five year interval productivity will have to be enhanced by an average of about 80 kg/ha over the previous one to achieve a final productivity rate of 950 kg/ha by the end of 2025 and 1335 kg/ha by the end of 2050. The above-stated projections have been made assuming that practically it will be feasible to increase about 4 million ha additional area under pulses. The current per capita availability is estimated at 41.6 g/capita/day which was quite low (31.8 g) in 2000. Cultivation of pulses on poor soils under rainfed conditions with minimum inputs and care subject these crops to severe yield losses not only due to edaphic, abiotic and socio-economic factors but also due to confounding effects of various biotic stresses. High influence of environmental factors and their interactions with genotype are the major production constraint in pulses which lead to a limited gain in terms of productivity in most of the pulses. Therefore, for increasing of production of pulses, intercropping systems found to more beneficial in comparison to sole cropping systems in respect to profitability and soil fertility.