Millet and pulse-based intercropping system for agricultural sustainability - A review

Abstract

Millets and Pulses are world's renowned crops known for their nutritional significance. Millets being an underutilized species; farmer's especially in the rainfed zone solely depend on them for their livelihood; which could be enhanced through a planned and efficient intercropping system. Millets are highly adapted to higher temperature, scanty rainfall, poor fertile soils etc., leading its importance in climate change scenario. On the other hand, limiting land resources equipped with poor soil fertility status leads to find a way for efficient utilization of available resources along with enhanced productivity per unit area and time. This situation can be overcome by intercropping millets along with legumes and this has witnessed higher production with additional benefits which make them more suitable intercropping choice. It is very important that the performance under intercropping system depends on the selection of suitable intercrop. For assessment of intercropping, different indices have been used to determine advantage of an intercropping system over sole cropping using different formulae. This review gives a critical view about millets and pulse-based intercropping for agricultural sustainability.