Effect of Sali rice-relay system on growth and yield of succeeding fodder maize + green gram intercropping system in rice-fallows of Assam

Abstract

A field experiment was conducted to evaluate the effect of the Sali rice-relay system on the growth and yield of fodder maize + green gram intercropping during summer. The treatments comprised three dates of rice transplanting with four relay crops lentil, pea, toria, and niger. Significantly higher values of green fodder yield of maize were recorded when summer intercrops were grown after rice-lentil (205 and 196 q/ha in both the years) and rice-pea (198 and 189 q/ha in both the years) relay sequence as compared to rice-toria and rice-niger system. However, a significantly higher number of pods/plants, seed yield, and stover yield of green gram were found after the rice-toria and rice-niger relay sequence as compared to that of the rice-lentil and rice-pea systems. The effect of relay crops was also found significant on REY of fodder maize and green gram. The highest value of REY of maize fodder was found after the rice-lentil (16 q/ha) and rice-pea (15.42 q/ha) relay sequence, while the highest values of REY of green gram was recorded after rice-toria (37.26 q/ ha) and rice-niger (37.02 q/ha).